


like roses, death blooms

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Child Abuse, Child Death, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical Abuse, Rape Aftermath, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Slow Burn, Suicide, Torture, please heed the warnings i beg of you, previous reed900 but it wasn't a good relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-01-31 18:58:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 89,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21451126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Six years ago, Connor had his last contact with his brother before he disappeared from his life. Six months ago, Gavin was kidnapped by a group of people looking for Niles. After their paths collide, Gavin struggles to cope with the torture he endured and Connor has to decide if he should exploit Gavin's past relationship with his brother to find him. Things take a turn when one night weeks after their last meeting, Gavin calls him asking Connor for help and his hunt for his brother is put on hold in favor of getting revenge on the people who hurt Gavin.
Relationships: Connor/Gavin Reed
Comments: 61
Kudos: 141





	1. Remnants

<strike> **??? ** | — </strike>

It is a stupid thing to think about, but Gavin tries to busy his mind when this is happening. He tries to focus on other things. To pretend that what is happening isn’t happening. Mostly, it is after, though. Because during it is nearly impossible to not think about how much pain he is in. How much he is being stripped down and another piece of his soul is being torn away from him. Leaving him a little more tattered and little more useless and a little more worthless. Something to never be wanted again, if he ever was to begin with.

And after, Gavin thinks. He thinks instead of concentrating on the pain or the fresh bruises or the blood. He thinks and tries to keep his thoughts occupied with something other than how unlovable he is becoming.

But it doesn’t really work, because all he thinks about instead is how unlovable he was before, too.

Gavin was wanted once, he thinks. When he was younger. When he was untainted by the world. When he had hope and freedom and a best friend and a brother that loved him. When there was the possibility of anything and everything.

Now there is nothing, and there has been nothing for a long time. It just builds and builds. He doesn’t know what happened. What went wrong and where, when, _ why _.

He remembers the last time someone wanted him, genuinely, for himself, he said no because he didn’t think he should date someone he couldn’t ever truly love. He accepted himself then. He was proud of himself. He didn’t hide that he liked men and wasn’t attracted to women. It wasn’t something he was ashamed of, even if he didn’t tell every person he saw. But he didn’t hate himself for it.

Now he hates himself for anything and everything. He hates himself especially for that. Gavin hates how he will never be able to be with another person again without picturing these people touching him. He doesn’t want to think about that. He forces his thoughts away.

Back to his original distraction.

Back to the last person that made him feel dirty and unwanted and unlovable. And Niles didn’t even have to do much to make him feel that way. It was just how he was. Perfect, in so many ways. Perfect enough that it made Gavin feel worthless. How could they ever possibly, truly be together? Gavin liked to ignore the part of Niles that didn’t want a real relationship. He focused instead on what he could do to change himself so that he might be wanted.

If he didn’t look the way he did, if he didn’t act the way he did, if he didn’t have his history or his problems, would Niles want him?

Gavin thinks about that the most during the _ After. _

The _ After _is his own personal torture. These people spend hours hurting him again and again and then they leave him alone with his thoughts and his pain to torture himself.

He could’ve scrapped himself clean. He tried so hard to. He tried so hard to fix himself, to pretend not to be broken. He tried, again and again, to not be the person he was. If he could hide all the cracks in his facade, maybe he would be wanted. And it worked, he thinks. There was a brief time he thought when Gavin was altering every bit of himself that Niles actually wanted him. He tricked himself into it. Those two months were some of the best parts of his life. The person he wanted seemed to genuinely want him back.

It did not last long.

It never would, and it never does.

Niles didn’t see through his mask—or maybe he did, but it wasn’t what broke them. It was Gavin’s fault. It was Gavin not hiding so much of himself. Letting the real parts of him slip out. The parts that are angry and vicious. The parts that crave and crave and crave. The parts of him too broken to hold together with the shitty job he did at tucking away the broken pieces. He thought because Niles was starting to like him he could finally let himself be who really is again. Like he could fool Niles into loving him and then he would’ve caught Niles and he wouldn’t be able to let go.

He was wrong, and then he lost everything.

Because he always wants more and he always wants more from the people that are incapable of giving it to him.

Gavin curls up tight, brings the tattered remains of a blanket around him. Out of the shame of his exposed body, out of the shame of people seeing him cry. He is so tired of crying. He wishes that something inside of him would snap. That he could revert to a numb state that wouldn’t feel any of this. But he feels everything. He feels too much. It is drowning him. Suffocating him in sadness and anger. Tormenting him every second of the day.

_ Stop. Stop. Stop. _

  
  


<strike> **??? ** | — </strike>

“Fucking crying again?”

His head is slammed against the wall. He feels the pain ringing out in his head, spots in his vision. Gavin is used to this, the pain, the torture, the cruel tone of voice. But he thought he was free from pain today. Usually, after they hurt him like this, they leave him alone for a while. Like they know they’ve reached the maximum that they could hurt them. A few days a solace.

But not him.

Not Eddie.

He doesn’t care. He never cares. He just wants to hurt more.

Gavin squeezes his eyes shut. Not to stop the tears, but to avoid looking at Eddie. It doesn’t stop him from hearing the sound of the belt come undone and the revulsion roll through his body.

_ Please, please, please. _

He thinks it first. In an act of defiance. Some old stubbornness still existing inside of him, refusing to beg. Refusing to plead with someone not to hurt him.

But then there is a hand in his hair, forcing his head back. A thumb on his lips, forcing his mouth open, and the words tumble out again and again.

_ Please stop. _

_ Stop. Stop. Stop. _

_ Leave me alone. _

_ Please. _

  
  


<strike> **??? ** | — </strike>

He wonders if he should be grateful, sometimes. When he feels disgusting and broken and used. When he has to fight the urge from throwing up because they will just make him clean it up, and they will always find ways to humiliate him for it. Sometimes he wonders if he should be grateful that these people at least want him in some way. Even if it’s through force. Even if they reject his protests. Even if they don’t listen to him. Even if they get off on him fighting back or screaming.

Sometimes he wonders if he should be grateful that at least someone wants him.

It’s all Gavin has ever really wanted.

Just to be wanted.

_ Not like this. _

Never like this.

He never wanted this.

  
  


<strike> **??? ** | — </strike>

In the beginning, when they didn’t cross the line, they kept his cell cold. Extraordinarily cold. Some type of torture, making him shiver. His insides frozen to the core, unable to properly move his hands or his body. Physically frozen to the spot.

They keep it hot now. So hot that it doesn’t matter that they took his clothes away, he would have peeled them off his body. He still keeps himself covered with the blanket. At least he has that. But it is disgusting in its own way. It smells like them. Cigarettes and booze.

He used to smoke. Gavin remembers sitting out on the terrace of Niles’ apartment with a cigarette between his fingertips and feeling for the first time some form of happiness because Niles told him he shouldn’t smoke. It was just a small comment. Said in the same flat, unfeeling tone as everything Niles’ says is. But it was that he cared enough to comment about Gavin’s health.

Or Gavin thought he cared.

Niles made it clear he didn’t care about anything but himself in the end.

Gavin can’t think that he would ever touch another pack of cigarettes in his life now. It reminds him too much of them. His own memories are being tainted by the present. When he thinks about him as a sixteen-year-old, sitting out behind the bleachers of his high school with Eli and Tina and passing their first cigarette around, laughing and thinking they were cool—

It’s wrong now. It feels like it has been drowned out by all of this.

  
  


<strike> **??? ** | — </strike>

Gavin doesn’t hallucinate, but he has vivid dreams. Dreams that convince him he might get out of the basement. Dreams that he might see daylight again. He dreams of being a teenager, waking up and heading out into the city with Eli and Tina. Sitting in the old treehouse behind Tina’s place and writing lyrics down in a notebook. Dreams within dreams where he’s young and thinking about being famous. Tina and Eli always loved the idea of starting a band. They even started making music once Chris moved to town and joined their tiny little group.

He dreams of them having the life they always dreamed of. Being happy, getting famous and escaping their small town. He dreams of that, and it feels so real he almost believes it. The lingering smoke of reality twists inside of nightclubs and behind alleys where he will meet someone that will truly love him.

Gavin has these dreams and he clings onto them as tight as possible, but they always vanish.

Niles is not vanishing now, though.

He stands in the doorway, a gun falling to his side as he steps into the room.

“Are you okay?”

Gavin does not hallucinate.

He doesn’t not imagine people or things. He doesn’t picture Niles in the doorway of his cell because he doesn’t dream of his cell. He doesn’t have nightmares. His dreams are his only escape.

“Niles?” he whispers, and it is the first thing he has said in six months that hasn’t been to Eddie or the others, asking them to stop hurting him.

But he is still pleading, hoping, wishing that it’s him—that Niles finally came to save him. That everything will change. That he will kneel down in front of him and kiss him and tell him he loves him. That everything was a mistake before and they can start over. Everything will be better now.

“No,” he says quietly. “I’m not—My name isn’t Niles. You know him?”

_ What? _

“You look exactly like him,” Gavin whispers, and he would’ve gotten up and ran to him if he could. But he hurts and he doesn’t think he can walk, and he doesn’t want to lose the only shield against the world he has, even if the blanket is small, even if it has holes, even if that fabric is so thin he knows the curves of his body can still be seen clearly.

“What—”

It is like a light-switch going off. Everything happening all at once in the span of a few seconds.

One bullet fired, hitting the wall beside him. A yell erupting across the room—

And then the next moment, Gavin’s fingers are on his cheek, touching the surface of it, coming away wet and bloody as not-Niles is turning, the gun in his hand held up again. He fires, but Gavin is only numbly aware of it. Thinking too much about the new pain, the new blood.

He vaguely hears not-Niles walking, the shoes against the cement muffled underneath everything. He isn’t listening to the words, but when the hand touches his cheek, he jerks away, hitting his head hard against the wall behind him in an effort to get away.

_ Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me— _

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “Let me help you. Can I help you?”

_ No. No. No. _

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m sorry. I won’t touch you. Just tell me your name?”

“G-Gavin.”

“Gavin. Okay,” he lets out a small breath. “You knew Niles? You knew my brother?”

His eyes are closed. He can’t open them. Everything hurts. There was one moment of feeling nothing but then he saw the blood and the man tried to touch him and it has all snapped back into focus again. Everything is heavy and hurting.

“Connor,” he whispers quietly.

“Hm?”

“My name is Connor.”

_ Oh. _

He is slipping away again. Something comforting and black pulling him down. He can hear the person still talking, but he can’t pay attention to the words anymore. 

Not-Niles.

_ Connor. _

  
  


**February 27th **| 5:34 A.M.

It was supposed to be easy. That’s what Hank told him. The building was small, closed off. Not a lot of people, not a lot of security. He could get in, get his target and go. Eddie was supposed to be here. There were only three people, and only one of them is dead, another wounded. Usually, he is a better shot. Usually, he is better at this.

Usually, he doesn’t kill anyone but the target. There’s no reason. There is no money he is getting paid for. But he saw through the window the person on the other side. Sitting on that tiny bed against the wall. Curled up, hiding from sight. Connor has seen a hundred people like that. Children and women and men, hiding from their attackers as best as they can, despite cameras or one-way mirrors with watchers on the other side.

He didn’t think when he pulled the gun from his belt and pulled the trigger on the man leaned against the window, swiping through pictures on his phone.

Pictures of the man.

_ Gavin. _

Gavin threw him off with that name. Calling him Niles. He is a better shot than that, he isn’t usually so easily rattled, but when the other guy fired at him, he was too out of it to aim properly. Missing him, hitting his shoulder. A trial of blood left behind. He got away, but Connor went through the entire building searching for the missing two just to make sure. Now Eddie is going to be warned, he’s going to get away again.

But Gavin is out.

He’s here.

Sitting in the passenger seat of his car, a jacket pulled over his shoulders, a blanket wrapped around him tight. Connor isn’t stupid. He didn’t need to see the photos over the shoulder of that man to know what happened to Gavin. He keeps him as covered as possible. Protecting whatever is left of him.

  
  


**February 27th **| 9:34 P.M.

Gavin sleeps for a long time. At the basement, his words were slurring together. He was trying to move, to hold onto Connor, saying Niles’ name again and again before passing out against him. Connor should’ve left him at a hospital and never came back, but there is something in the back of his head telling him that he can’t lose this stranger, even if he might not know anything else about Niles.

Gavin must’ve known him. Not just superficially—Connor and Niles were both trained to be deceptive. Keep their names away from anybody and anyone for as long as possible. Make it so the person was too engaged in conversation to even remember or realize by the time they walked away that they never caught the name. There are a hundred floating in Connor’s head. Fakes ones he gives when he has no other choice. Passports and IDs to back them up for safety precautions.

But Connor and Niles?

They are secrets. They are only divulged to people they trust.

Niles trusted him.

Connor paces around the hospital hallway back and forth for a long time, his hands fiddling with the chain around his neck. Waiting for Hank to pick up his phone. He didn’t want to say anything about bringing Gavin here for help. He didn’t know how to explain it, but he doesn’t know if he’s capable of hiding this. Not from Hank. Hank is his only confidant. He’s the only person that Connor trusts. But telling him about Gavin feels like a step over the line. Hank might be his only friend, but it seems difficult to explain the situation now. Connor has never tried to help a person like this before. He’s called ambulances and police and fled. He didn’t stay at hospitals waiting for someone to wake up.

And it feels weird saying Gavin’s name, when he has only heard him say two words.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to say.

All he knows is that he should leave before Gavin wakes up, and he hasn’t.

  
  


**February 28th **| 1:16 A.M.

The police are here. They’re allowed in when Gavin wakes up. Connor stays out in the hallway, just around the corner. Pacing around the outside of someone else’s door. He listens to their conversation, listens to Gavin’s voice groggy and tired but angry and loud, telling them to leave him alone. That the wounds on his body were self-inflicted. That he doesn’t want to press charges against the people who hurt him.

Connor stays silent, listening in. Waiting for the cops to argue back, but they don’t. They drop it. They leave. There is nothing further.

They don’t care about how clearly Gavin lied. They don’t care about the evidence.

Maybe it’s for the best.

Connor has a contract he needs to follow through on. He can’t let the police get in the way or he won’t get paid. Not that money even matters to him. It hasn’t. It never has. He has his apartment. He has his plants that die every time a target keeps him out of the country too long. But as much as it pains him to admit it—he misses Niles, and this case stopped being about taking out the leader of a gang that terrorized a neighborhood once Niles’ name cropped up in the files.

  
  


**February 28th **| 2:47 P.M.

Gavin is supposed to stay here for a week, minimum. Observation and medication. Getting everything back to normal. He was dehydrated, nearly starved. Tortured, among other things. He doesn’t want to admit the last part. Most of his injuries now came from the last part. They stopped actively torturing him pretty fast when he didn’t show any sign of breaking.

Or rather—

He did break.

Over and over again. Crying and begging after the first week that they believe him.

_ Where is Nines? _

He doesn’t know. _ He doesn’t know. _

If he knew, Gavin might’ve tracked him down and yelled at him like he has wanted to for the last six months. The anger inside of him first reaching its boiling point at the attackers and then switching to Niles. Over and over again, telling him how he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He wouldn’t be hurt. He wouldn’t be assaulted. He would just be a sad lonely boy in an apartment waiting and wishing for things to change. And even before they kidnapped him, he had his fleeting moments of anger. He just always denied them. He never wanted to admit that he was angry at Niles, it felt like crossing a line he put down because he so desperately thought if he kept the anger subdued and ignored, eventually Niles could come back to him. As a friend, if nothing else.

But Niles was there.

Gavin saw him.

He thought he saw him.

_ How did he end up here? _

  
  


**February 28th **| 3:02 P.M.

The police tell him he’s in Detroit. It was strange having to admit he doesn’t know where he is. The men took him in the middle of the night, a needle in his neck and nothing for an unknown number of hours. It felt like he was out forever, it felt like he was out for only a second. The basement didn’t have windows. They never told him the time.

He doesn’t want to press charges. They tell him repeatedly that his injuries, the extent of them, it means he doesn’t really get a say in it.

_ The rape kit— _

He was not raped. He tells them that a thousand times before they finally let it drop. And he feels sick that someone touched him like that when he wasn’t even awake to fight them off. But he takes the medicine they give him anyway. They let him test his blood for STDs. He lies to himself and says that’s not what it’s for when they wrap the band around his arm and he keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to see the needle. The nurse is understanding. She is kind, her voice quiet, gentle, telling him that it’s his decision when it comes to this, but he knows she’ll send in someone later to talk to him more on the topic, and he will give her the same treatment as everyone else on the subject.

Gavin remains adamant in his stance with the police, though. The wounds were self-inflicted (they don’t buy it) he was not raped (they don’t buy it) he was not hurt by someone (they don’t buy it). They let out a paired sigh of frustration toward him out of boredom from repetition or annoyance at the waste of time, he isn’t sure, and they leave.

And he is all alone again. Waiting in an empty hospital room, eyes blinded by the bright white of the sun outside his window, but not taking his eyes off the clouds and the city.

_ Detroit. _

How funny that he kept thinking he was worlds and worlds away from his home but it was right here next to him all along.

  
  


**February 28th **| 3:46 P.M.

“Are you sure there’s no one for me to call for you?”

“No,” he says. “I—There’s no one to call.”

And there isn’t.

Except maybe Elijah. If he really needed to, he could tell Eli. He doesn’t think their broken bond is so irreparable that he would refuse to help when Gavin is like this. He doesn’t want to go back to his apartment. But he doesn’t know Eli’s number, and he doesn’t want to tell anyone his name. If he stays _ John Doe _then the report of his injuries and his wounds aren’t real. They aren’t tied to him. He can be separate. He can still be something.

But he remembers how his name sounded on the lips of those men and he knows that it doesn’t matter how much he tries to distance himself from this, he will never be able to hear his name said that won’t make him want to scream.

  
  


**February 28th **| 7:29 P.M.

Gavin leaves his bed when he’s finally left alone for longer than two minutes. He stands in the bathroom, hand hovering over the light-switch for a long time before he flicks it on and the soft golden light destroys the darkness hiding the extent of his injuries.

It’s funny—the hospital gown covers more of his body than the clothes he had before. Pale blue with little birds on them, flying away. He feels like a child, but he doesn’t look like one. He looks like he’s aged a hundred years. There’s a cut on his face that’s been stitched shut, bruises of varying ages all across his skin. It hurts to walk. It hurts to look at himself. He thinks he forgot what he looked like, too.

He spent so long imagining his life from when he was a kid, that it’s surprising to see the facial hair. He runs his hand along it, feeling the irregular shave in the stubble. A way of humiliating him, Gavin guesses. They liked to shave it in stupid shapes. They would laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world.

His hair is too long, too. The closest it ever got to being washed was when they would hold his head under the water of a tub full of ice cubes.

And it feels that way now, too. Like there is chunks of ice sitting inside of his stomach, refusing to melt or numb the pain. Just pressed against his skin and choking away any bit of life he has left.

  
  


**March 2nd **| 10:15 A.M.

“You have a visitor.”

His head snaps up from his tray. Old papers filled with scribbles. Testing out handwriting and spelling like he forgot how to do it. Six months didn’t feel like six months. He didn’t have a way to count the passage of time. He thought it was six years, until they told him the date. He thought he might’ve forgotten how to write.

He even thought he might’ve forgotten how to speak, since the only words he said in the last six months were _ please stop please don’t please no. _

_ Pleasepleaseplease. _

He watches the door, watches the man step inside.

“Niles?”

  
  


**March 2nd **| 10:16 A.M.

Connor remembers when he was younger and he used to want to be mistaken for Niles. He was the better student, constantly praised. But it was hard. Niles was half an inch taller than him and it was a minute detail, but they were trained to recognize the minute details. The slightly sharper shape of Niles’ jaw. The rounder eyes that Connor has. He knew every difference between them as well as he knew every similarity.

But now, being mistaken for Niles hurts.

He looks over to the nurse, who nods and leaves them alone, the door closing behind her. Heavy and wide, closing with a soft thud that feels like it vibrates through his bones. Connor steps forward, breathing in heavily, willing it to come out with a hundred words but it only comes out with one:

“Connor.”

“What?”

“My name is Connor,” he says, walking closer to the bed. Scared, tentative steps. Repeating the same dance he had done before.

How many people has he killed? How many people has he kidnapped and sent away to be tortured for information needed to stop the production of zombie-esque viruses and the exploitation of women and children? How many times has he walked into buildings with desiccated bodies and how many times has he been on the other end?

And yet he can’t do this.

He doesn’t work with victims. He doesn’t like to be around the people that have been hurt by the targets he hunts down. It reminds him too much of his own ache. It makes him soft and useless. It makes him incapable of being the type of person he’s supposed to be. He loses himself. Especially around a boy like Gavin that knows his brother’s name.

“I don’t—”

“Niles is my brother,” he says. “Twin. You knew him?”

Gavin watches him, staring up at him, eyes settling over his features, like everything is clicking into place.

“Your eyes are different.”

Connor smiles and nods. _ Yeah. _The last time he and Niles talked, it was after he found out that Niles went into surgery to change subtle things about his features. Sharper lines, blue eyes. Amazing the technology they have on hand. They no longer match.

_ Why would I want to look like you? _

He sucks in a breath, steeling himself, fidgeting with his hands under his jacket where it rests on one arm, looped over there an hour ago as he wandered the halls below, avoiding nurses and doctors that would ask him if he needed help finding a room.

He just didn’t want to come up here. But he had to. For Niles. For Gavin. To see if he’s okay.

He is not okay.

“Why are you here?”

He tries not to laugh, to let the bubble of it overflow, but it does, “I found you.”

“You saved me?” Gavin asks, but he says it sarcastically, angrily, bitterly. Like saving him means something else than what Connor thinks it does.

“I found you,” he repeats.

He knows he didn’t save Gavin.

  
  


**March 2nd **| 10:17 A.M.

“So I can blame you for the hospital bills?” he asks as Connor moves closer again. Inching more and more forward, wearing one of those suits that look like the same ones he saw hanging in Niles's closet.

They really do look identical.

Connor pulls the look off better. Like a nervous businessman. Niles looked like an executioner, a hitman.

Although, it’s funny. Niles was a hitman, and he just did a terrible job at hiding it.

“I can pay for them,” Connor replies, but he says it like Gavin asked him the question seriously.

And it makes him so—

So fucking angry.

Gavin has to cut it off fast, because he can’t handle the anger that is constantly sitting inside of him anymore. He needs to let it go. He needs to stop. He needs to breathe without feeling like he is going to break. He has never felt so fragile before. Like too strong of an emotion might make everything inside of him crack and break into a thousand pieces. He doesn’t need Connor to save him. He didn’t need Niles to save him. He is fine. He has always been fine.

“Did you only come here to see if I’m still alive?”

Connor tries for a smile and fails, “No. But…”

But _ yes, _he did.

“I’m fine,” he says. “I’ll live. They keep shoving pills down my throat. No surgeries. Just stitches. Is that all?”

Connor has the look of _ no _written across his features, but too scared to say the word out loud. Too scared to say the real reason.

Which leaves him with the obvious.

“Niles?”

Connor nods.

“I don’t know where he is.”

“But you knew him,” Connor replies. “You were friends with him.”

Gavin laughs because it’s hilarious to call it that—

They were not friends. Gavin was useful to him until he wasn’t and then he was thrown outside with the rest of the garbage and two months later a bunch of fuckwads picked him up and threw him in the back of a van. One man’s trash is another man’s fuck toy and all that.

And now he’s here.

“I knew him,” he says. “That’s all.”

“I haven’t talked to him in a long time,” Connor says quietly. “I just—”

“He was alive last time I saw him, alright? I have no clue where he is now. I’m sure he’s fine.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry about what?”

Connor smiles, sad and small. Soft and broken, “All of it. Everything.”

  
  


**March 7th **| 11:23 A.M.

Connor does pay for his hospital bills. In full, the day after he’s released. He doesn’t come back. Not when Gavin is awake. But he does find a bag of his things—not really _ his things. _Just a bag they tell him is his stuff left behind by his visitor. Packed full of brand new clothes with tags still on them, a pair of sneakers a size too big.

He takes a cab to his apartment on the other side of the city, looking for the key hidden at the top of a window sill at the end of the hall, taped in place three years ago the first time he accidentally locked himself out. He doesn’t know what happened to his wallet. He can’t recall if he had it that night or not. He’d left to go drinking. He needed to get drunk, to not exist for a little while. But he also remembers trying to find it in his pockets and turning back around.

Or was it his phone he left behind, and the wallet is what clattered to the floor in the fight when they grabbed him?

Gavin thought stepping inside of his apartment would be like going back in time. Putting himself where he was six months ago and erasing some of the history, but it’s the opposite. It’s this reminder of everything that has happened, everything in their perfect places, left behind and untouched. It’s a weird clash of ripping a wound open and closing up another. Seeing everything just sitting on the shelves in their places, the blanket still on the floor from where he stumbled out toward the door late in the night, the dishes drying and the dead herbs in the windowsill—

It makes him realize how much he has changed. How little he is like the person before that would spend hours online clicking through sites trying to find the right shade of blue for his curtains because it was all he did in his spare time. Anything to distract himself and fill the gap of silence. He had thought about getting a pet, but had been shot down by his landlord, and it’s the only thing he can be grateful for now. He doesn’t know what would have happened to a dog or a hamster in his missing time. His payments for rent go through automatically. Nobody would’ve checked in on him until it ran out of cash.

And, he realizes, as he sets the bag of clothes down that aren’t his on the countertop, closing the door behind him—

Gavin doesn’t feel the emptiness he had before. Not in the same way. Before he felt a cave inside of him, cold and empty and telling him that he could never be loved. That Niles would never fill that gap the way he wanted him too. How pathetic and stupid he was trying to change himself for someone that would never care. It is replaced with anger. Everything is replaced with anger, besides the broken pieces of his soul left scattered around like broken pieces of a vase. Niles carved out a space inside of him but the anger is willing and ready to fill it up again.

He tries not to think about it. The more he thinks about Niles, the more he will think about those men. They have inherently become tied together, twisting into one thing sitting in the back of his head as the things that ruined him. Happening too close in time to separate them properly.

He is supposed to be in the After now. After the men and After the people. He is_ After-Gavin _ now, and After-Gavin should be getting better. He shouldn’t dwell. Not for a week or a day. He tries to focus on being After-Gavin, but he doesn’t know why Connor was there, and he remembers the gun in his hand and the suits he wears and he has to question himself if they are one and the same.

Niles was a hitman. That’s the only reason the two of them met.

What is it to say Connor isn’t one, too?

  
  


**March 7th **| 12:51 P.M.

He is caught between thinking that some of the things in his apartment are sickening and being relieved. He is relieved to have a laptop again. He boots it up, fingers gliding across the keys fast. He set up everything to pay automatically. Rent and utilities and internet, letting him find old chatrooms, but it’s hard to go back. Before, he would talk constantly. Filling his time chatting with other people, taking up easy jobs that people paid too much for. He wasn’t the best hacker in the world, but he had connections, and he was fast at what he could do. His speed made for him as an alluring option when some poor old housewife wanted her husband’s emails.

His inbox now is flooded with requests, a scattered email or two about where he’s been. Most of them are just offhand comments, things he knows come from people who will just assume that he’s given up on the hacking life and left quietly. It wouldn’t be the first time. People disappear constantly. They get lives, they get jobs that don’t require snooping around to find the exact location of a girlfriend at three am on a Wednesday night or where a teenager goes after school gets out.

Gavin clicks around in his inbox, deleting the messages one after another. Pausing when he starts to get to the ones further down from Tina. Email after email that he sifts through chronologically. Messages about game nights and if his mic is set up to play, followed up with ones about how he could’ve warned her that he wasn’t going to show up. More that started to shift to a worried tone. _ Where are you? Where did you go? Are you alright? Gavin, please respond. I’m scared. _

_ I miss you. _

He never thought someone would miss him. But she does. She did. There is one after the last few, sent a few weeks ago in the middle of the night. The typos filling up the screen to such an extent that he has a hard time making it out. Tina must’ve been drunk. She only gets mean when she’s drunk, and leaves a message in all caps that he better be dead for abandoning her like this.

He doesn’t blame her. If Gavin was going to cut her out of his life, he would’ve done it this way. He would’ve just shut down and never said another word. He would’ve pretended in the last message that everything was fine.

But he didn’t, and now he doesn’t know how to respond. He doesn’t remember how to act, to be a person. To be kind. To be a friend. He doesn’t know how to compose a message explaining and apologizing, so he doesn’t. He just closes the laptop and curls up on the couch, the blanket pulled around his shoulders, and realizes that he’s alone.

For the first time in a long time, he is alone.

As much as he feels like nothing in here is his anymore, he is grateful for that— 

The loneliness. Even if it’s hard to breathe, there aren’t people watching his every move.

This is the After.

And it is terrible, almost insufferably, empty and quiet.

  
  


**March 13th **| 1:51 A.M.

It is supposed to end. Connor cut him off as best as he could. Leaving him with what little he could. He didn’t research into who Gavin was—he couldn’t without a last name. He didn’t know what to do to help. He thought about setting up an apartment, leaving him with fifty-thousand in cash to get himself somewhere, but it felt weird. It felt like a payoff. It felt like a stalker-move. To know where he would be living, to know what he was doing, and only because Gavin knew his brother.

So Connor didn’t, but he tried to have some small act of kindness. Hospital bills and extra clothes just in case. He doesn’t know Gavin’s situation and he knows he could’ve done more, but every time he tried to think of something to do, some part of him was telling him why it was wrong.

He tries to be by himself. He goes back to what he is good at. He listens to Hank spill out the details of the next contract and he packs his bags for a trip to New York the next day,, but he thinks about Niles constantly. It doesn’t matter how fractured their relationship is, Niles is still his brother. He doesn’t want to lose him, even if he already has. He wants him back in his life. It feels wrong to just let him go, even if that was what they were taught.

_ Don’t get attached. Don’t care. Don’t worry. Don’t think. Just act. Move. Carry on. Don’t stand still. _

In a year, Connor will give up the apartment he has and move to another city, one just as big that he can blend into, and he doesn’t want to. He likes this place. It feels a little closer to home, wherever that may be. He has spent a long time trying to find it. He doesn’t remember it anymore.

  
  


**March 22nd **| 2:25 P.M.

It happens by accident.

Gavin is trying to work up the courage to leave his apartment. Each day he goes a little farther, making a different coffee shop his destination. There has always been safety inside the walls of a coffee shop, ever since he was little. His first date with a guy was at one. He first admitted to loving someone just outside of the doors of another. After Tina moved away and they met up again years later, it was at a place called Sumo’s where they hugged for five minutes straight and promised to not let their connection die again. He spent hours upon hours sitting inside of a booth with his laptop open and working away, getting the coding and the details just right when he had a cup of coffee with too much sugar at his side.

He started with the one across the street, he moved further and further away. The money in his pocket trickling away slowly. At first he let all of his groceries be delivered. He didn’t want to leave. He has done nothing but sit inside of his new home, laying on the couch, looking up at the ceiling. He hasn’t taken up any new jobs, but he was smart before. He made a savings account, investing what he could for rainy days. And Niles, too—

Niles was the worst. The jobs Gavin did for him weren’t legal, and they weren’t exactly morally good, either, but they paid well and just before he left, another two-hundred grand was deposited into his account. Like Gavin was being paid off to keep quiet. It’s enough to not have to worry. It’s enough to spend a few weeks or months trying to repair himself. It’s enough to give him the time to test how easy it is to walk down a street full of strangers and convince himself that one of them isn’t going to be an attacker waiting to take him away again.

No familiar faces.

Except—

Connor.

For a moment, Gavin thinks it’s Niles. Again. For a third time. The memories of Connor in the basement came back to him slowly, in bits of pieces, breaking into the nightmares. He doesn’t sleep much. He lays at home, doing absolutely nothing but trying to sift through the messages and gain the emotional capacity to respond to any of them. To come up with a lie other than kidnap and assault to explain his absence.

He pretends he got married, just to himself, and that he got distracted with a wife and kids, but even he knows that isn’t believable. Especially not to Tina, who is the only one he feels he owes a response to.

There’s this weird fear, every time he wakes up, that the men are going to find them again. There was a newspaper article about a torture dungeon with only one body found dead. Case unsolved. Going colder and colder fast because of the lack of evidence. Gavin knows that’s where he was. He doesn’t need to read more or try to find the leaked photos from the crime scene. All it means to Gavin is that there are seven more people out there that hurt him, completely free, not suffering any consequences.

And now Connor is here, sitting at a table at the cafe, flipping through the pages of a book, drinking tea. He isn’t wearing a suit, and somehow this version of him sits better in his head. Over-sized sweater, chunky gray knit, leaning on one hand. Hair curly, out of place. Not straight, not perfectly gelled into place like Niles always had.

He looks like the kind of boy that Gavin would sit at another table and watch for a few minutes, trying to work up the courage to ask out and then go back on it because if anyone asked him out, he would bite back with anger because he just wants to have a cup of fucking coffee.

But it’s him. Gavin knows it. The eyes are this deep shade of brown. Not really remarkable in the color, but the life behind them. The softness. The sincerity. The serious nature of reading.

Gavin sits across from him without thinking.

“Are you stalking me?”

Connor glances up, his face shifting to shock, “Gavin—”

“Are you stalking me?” he asks again.

“No.”

He doesn’t know if he believes him. It’s a one-word response, but it’s said so surprised that Gavin doesn’t know how to reject it. He isn’t good at seeing through people’s intentions. He was, before, but now everyone seems evil. Every man on the street that glances his way makes him feel like he is going to be attacked all over again. A conspiracy in his own head, morphing faces into monsters.

He’s never even been to this coffee shop before, though. He hasn’t made it this far. It’s been two months and he’s never made it out this far.

It’s only two miles from his apartment. There are a lot of coffee shops between here and there, though.

“Are you sure?” he asks, because suddenly he doesn’t want to leave and be alone. He doesn’t know Connor, but he knows his face.

“I’m sure. I live here, you know.”

“In the cafe?”

Connor smiles, shaking his head, “No. Down the street. I come here almost every day. I’ve never seen you here, before. Maybe _ you’re _ stalking _ me _?”

“Yeah, I thought your brother was such a hot piece of ass I had to follow you, too.”

Connor’s smile disappears, like he suddenly remembers where Gavin has come from, “Are you okay?”

_ No. _Why would he be?

But he can’t tell Connor that, because he can’t tell Connor anything. He couldn’t tell Niles anything, and when he did, it ruined them. Everything he did felt like it was ruining them. If he locked up his feelings, Niles would tell him that they never talk but not in a way that was born from wanting a connection. It was just an offhand comment, like a sarcastic joke that Gavin wasn’t in on, and it was only said when Gavin would say the same thing to him. A sort of _ you don’t talk, either, so why are we bothering? _ situation. Maybe even a _ what does talking matter, when all we do is use each other? _

Tina would tell him that he needs to open up, that Niles is probably worried about him. And he would try, and Niles would get this expression like he couldn’t care less.

Too apathetic.

They didn’t work. They would never work. No matter how hard Gavin tried, and he did. Constantly. Every day for a year. Trying to be good enough and trying to be perfect enough and failing every time. He never knew what Niles wanted from him. All Gavin ever wanted from Niles was to have him.

It doesn’t matter. Gavin learned his lesson. He won’t talk about anything to anyone ever again. Bottle it all up until he explodes.

He’s being over-dramatic but—

HE doesn’t know. He wants to try again, sometimes. See if he can continue rearranging himself into something that can live, can survive all of the trauma. Losing Niles and losing Elijah and losing Tina.

He can’t. He can’t do anything.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

He laughs, sarcastic and bitter, “All my wounds are healed. Just like magic. Self-medicate until everything is okay.”

“With alcohol?”

“Coffee,” Gavin replies, but he’s lying.

He doesn’t get drunk, but he keeps wishing he could. He’s just scared. Scared that he will blackout and wake up down there again. And it doesn’t help that every time he sees a bottle of booze it reminds him that he was headed to the bar that night they took him or the scent of their breath or the times they forced it down his throat. Just like he will always associate Niles with them, he will associate booze and cigarettes, too.

“Too much coffee can be bad for you,” Connor says, saying the words carefully like _ coffee _could be exchanged for anything.

Maybe that’s fair.

“Thanks, mom,” he replies quietly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Connor tilts his head, “You cut your hair, too.”

He did. He bought a razor and impatiently awaited its arrival at his doorstep. Shaved off his stubble as close as he could get it, buzzed his hair down as far as it would go. He needed the dramatic shift. He needed to shed the weight of his past. He needed to start fresh and clean.

“It’s a requirement after—” Gavin cuts himself off. “You know. Trauma. Everyone that suffers from PTSD has to shave all their hair off.”

“You say it like a joke,” he replies, the unsaid _ but I know it’s not _echoing in the silence after.

“It helps,” he murmurs.

It helps to pretend that he’s okay. It helps to joke about what happened to him. It helps to minimize it as much as possible so he can get through the day. He cannot survive feeling like he does at night time when he lays down to sleep. It hurts too much. He has to carry on like he’ll be alright and that what they did to him wasn’t so bad just so he can carry on the next day to pretend again. Maybe somehow he’ll manage to get to a day where he doesn’t have to pretend anymore.

“Have you gone to see anyone? I know you didn’t press charges—”

“I thought you’d prefer that,” Gavin says, shoving this onto Connor. He doesn’t like it when people care about him. It feels fake and forced. “Then no one will link you to it.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?” Connor asks, tilting his head. “There are a lot of support groups and—”

“Therapists? It’s fine. I’m fine. I told you,” he replies. “Self-medicating, remember?”

Connor nods, but he doesn’t look ready to drop it. He looks like he wants to push further. And he probably could. He could push enough that Gavin would lie and make false promises, but he isn’t. He’s just watching Gavin and he makes an excuse to leave the table. Disappear from the cafe into the bathroom where he can waste away a few minutes trying to convince himself he’s okay again.

He can’t go to therapy. What would he tell them? He is caught between a hundred feelings. Too much shame to admit anything, too much guilt to not do anything. In the end, he just becomes a spineless coward with bruises and stitches on his body that he doesn’t think will ever go away. They will continue to exist, no matter how many pills he’s prescribed or how much he talks about it. It will always exist there, under the surface, rotting away at whatever remnants he was left with.

  
  


**March 22nd **| 2:37 P.M.

They don’t make some kind of promise to be friends. They go their separate ways after the coffee shop, which was filled with awkward conversation and comments mostly targeted toward their drinks of choice and the book Connor has. He says goodbye to Gavin, and for some reason, it feels like a goodbye that will be for forever, and it feels wrong and strange to never see him again. He doesn’t know how to explain it, just that he wants to hold onto him. His last connection to his brother.

He sneaks a note into Gavin’s bag when he’s in the bathroom. His phone number scribbled on one of the blank pages toward the end of his book, ripped from its place, folded up carefully, left in the front pocket of a beat-up messenger bag with twenty pins across the front, patches half-falling off from where they were ironed on.

He doesn’t know if Gavin is going to call him or ever find the slip of paper, but his number is there.

Just in case.


	2. Eruption

**March 29th ** | 4:16 A.M.

Gavin didn’t know their names. That wasn’t how it went. They didn’t introduce themselves to him, they didn’t even ask Gavin what his name was. They just knew it. His handle, too. They knew so much about him it made him sick to even think about his life. They had tainted it just by existing, by spitting back the details of his brother and his parents. He didn’t know their names, but he called them each by a title. He had to. It let him distinguish their different torture methods. It helped him know what to expect. He learned Eddie’s name because they used it when they talked to him. Like a torture device in and of itself.  _ Behave, or maybe Eddie will decide you don’t get to live anymore. _

He gave them titles in his head so he could hate them in his head without having to picture their faces, but he still knows their faces. He still knows each individual feature. When he dreams, they fill the space and take up everything. Gavin wakes up shaking and tired and exhausted. He hasn’t turned the lights off since he got here, only preserving the electricity when the sun is high enough in the sky that they feel useless. There is always background noise, there is always a pocket knife beside him, just in case the paranoia in his head of them watching him, knowing where he lives, comes true.

He keeps having those dreams—

Dreams where they follow him back from a coffee shop, push him inside, hurt him again.

Gavin is going to move. He can’t find a place he likes, but he’s already told his landlord that this is the last month. He’s going to be out of here, even if it means he leaves behind half of his things and stays in a hotel until he gets a place that he can call his.

But he changes the locks until then. Adds a few extra. Bolts the place up like he’s ready for the apocalypse.

And it sort of is—

Trapped here in this house with his thoughts. It’s a bit like the end of the world.

Why didn’t he just misbehave and let Eddie kill him?

  
  


**March 30th ** | 10:22 P.M.

Connor doesn’t like killing. It doesn’t matter to him who the target is, it feels like it takes something from him. He knows everyone he kills deserves it in some way or another, but it still feels strange, even now, even after being trained for this for his entire life. Pulling fiber wire around someone’s throat, holding it there until the life drains out of them and they can’t push him off—

Sometimes it’s just a reminder that he is a grim reaper. Bringing death and destruction everywhere he goes.

He knows how to hide bodies. He knows how to make sure they’re never found. He knows how to kill people and make it look like an accident, but sometimes it isn’t necessary. He lets the body drop to the floor, pocketing the wire before bending over the body, fishing out a flash-drive from the dead man’s jacket and leaving.

He’ll mail it in the morning to Hank. It won’t ever be in his vicinity again. The body will be found by morning, the security team will realize that their cameras have been hacked. There will be no trace of him. Connor is a ghost. He has been a ghost since the moment he was born.

Still—

It feels weird, sometimes.

To be killing politicians and doctors that pose threats against society, but leaving people like Gavin’s attackers roam free because they are too low-threat.

They lost Eddie’s trail, and Eddie was the only one on their radar. Nothing has changed just because there were other people in that house. The contract doesn’t extend to anyone but Eddie. There’s no reason to go after them. Not according to the company, not according to the contract. Not even the person who hired them. But there is to Connor. There are a hundred reasons for him to go after those men. Connor feels sick, suddenly, and he moves a little faster, dialing Hank as he makes his way back to the hotel, requesting that the plane ticket be changed for as soon as possible.

He doesn’t want to be here anymore. He wants to be home. He wants to be a person again.

  
  


**April 4th ** | 7:03 P.M.

Gavin tries to exist. Sometimes it’s easy. He is good at pretending. He was always good at acting like someone else, it was just difficult to become that person for longer than a few minutes at a time. If he could have, maybe Niles would have liked him more.

But he can pretend to be someone else for this short period of time in his living room. Putting on a show he would never watch, sitting on the couch with his legs folded underneath him, scrolling through websites that he would never go on. Pretending that he is some sports obsessed guy waiting for his girlfriend to come home from her job at the diner. Another late night among all the rest.

It helps. For a minute, it helps.

It doesn’t last. He gets bored fast, and he doesn’t want a girlfriend to walk through that door. He doesn’t know what he wants in her place, but he wants something that comforts him. He wants something to tell him that he dreamed all of this. That he can wake up now and he’ll be in his high school in the middle of math class, blinking awake after a long nap and he can go back to being sixteen and infatuated with the quarterback. He can be in the cafeteria with Tina and Chris and Elijah and work on their band name and song lyrics despite the fact they’ll never be famous. He can watch Chris sketch out flowers in a notebook and Tina arguing about being the lead singer.

He can go back to when he would be able to hope for a future and when he felt like he was alive instead of just existing and waiting to die.

  
  


**April 9th ** | 12:54 P.M.

He tries again. To pretend he is something else. He tries to pretend he made it as a band with him and his friends. He can’t even remember the name of it, just remembers that their music was decent enough that it was possible they could’ve half-made it. Playing at local bars and pubs, if Elijah hadn’t moved away and Chris hadn’t dated a cheerleader.

He cranks the music of one of his favorite bands and he screams the lyrics, not realizing how much he connected with the words until the middle of a Wednesday when there isn’t anything dark and shadowy to hide everything good away and show just the bad.

The lyrics show just the bad.

They expose it for all its ugly parts. For all of  _ his  _ ugly parts. Not that he ever could really fool himself enough to believe that there was anything else.

  
  


**April 9th ** | 2:23 P.M.

He’s digging glass out of his hands. Little shards that stuck to his skin when he punched the mirror.

He took the song too literally, but it felt good.

It felt like a release.

To hurt something.

To break something.

Even if it was himself.

  
  


**April 11th ** | 5:06 A.M.

Connor runs every morning that he can. It is usually limited to just his time in Detroit. Sometimes, when he goes to other places, the hotels will have gyms and he’ll get in as early as possible, stealing a treadmill and staying on it until he feels like his body is breaking.

It is the one thing he has. And he likes the city. He likes this place best. Utilizing the different roads and paths to give himself a semblance of freedom outside of his four walls. 

Connor just runs. Trying to forget. Trying to focus on something else. The cold air in his lungs, the seasons changing rapidly from the end of spring to the beginning of summer but cold days constantly cropping up just when he thinks it’s going to stop. He looks towards the fall more. Halloween, leaves falling, the chill that lets him wrap himself up in sweaters without it looking out of place.

It’s been a while since he’s seen Gavin. He shouldn’t be thinking about him, but he does.

He hopes he’s there at the coffee shop again. That their paths can cross once more. He hopes Gavin will find the phone number tucked away in his bag, but maybe it will be lost forever in the depths of a pocket that goes untouched for months at a time.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:05 P.M.

Gavin leaves his place, pretending he is someone else again. It makes it easier to get out when he pretends he’s someone else. Some greaser from a film twenty years back or more. Even a punk idiot teenager or a tattoo artist with too much ink on his body. He doesn’t have that, though. He wishes he could. He had so many dreams and plans to cover up the pieces of his skin, turning it into a map of his life, but it is too scarred now. Even if there was room for the tattoos he wanted, he wouldn’t let someone look at him long enough to put it there. There is only one, a rose on the inside of his forearm. Bright reds and greens long since faded now.

He leaves his apartment for groceries. Deciding to push himself, to buy it with his own two hands instead of calling a number or logging onto a site to have them delivered. It is an attempt to feel human again. To leave his apartment unattended and live.

It doesn’t really work.

Two streets away and he already feels this pressing weight of being watched, and he makes a wrong turn somewhere. A left instead of a right. Crossing the street when he wasn’t supposed to. Not paying attention to the names on the signs and instead trying to go off of memory like he did six months ago.

_ Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. _

“Gavin?”

He pauses. Freezes. Stops.

He shouldn’t.

He should run.

He needs to run,

_ Run. Run. Run. _

Fucking idiot—

“I’ve been looking for you.”

He turns.

He sees the face, as if he needed the confirmation first and not the voice—

The voice that has been in his dreams, the voice that has been crawling underneath his skin, burrowing into his bones, destroying him from the inside out—

_ Then _ he runs.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:06 P.M.

Gavin isn’t fast enough.

And he’s stupid.

He doesn’t run for safety in a nearby cafe or bookstore, he runs for his apartment. If they didn’t know where he lived before, they do now.

He is being followed by one of them. He saw the face but he doesn’t know if there are any others. He can’t remember the title he gave him, Gavin just remembers  _ him. _

When he first showed up, they tortured him endlessly. Hitting him and slicing him and making him bleed and bruise and burn. Leaving him broken and bloody and crying and telling them what he knows. He would’ve told them anything if he actually had the information they wanted. He just wanted it to stop.

And then he wasn’t alone. Suddenly there was someone else in his cell. Crying and bruised, with hands bound together in rope, sitting on the floor beside him, sharing his bed. Telling him that he thinks he knows of an escape plan, that together maybe they can overpower one of the men and get out.

He wasn’t—

He wasn’t a prisoner. He was false hope. He was an actor.

_ The Actor? The Prisoner? _

It didn’t matter what Gavin called him. Once the facade broke down, he was like everyone else.

Gavin isn’t fast enough to outrun him, but he tries.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:08 P.M.

It’s like in the movies, he thinks. His hands are shaking and he can’t get the keys out and there are too many locks on his door now. The man is behind him, coming up the stairs just as he finally gets the third and last lock undone and he’s pushing the door open, trying to get inside, cursing himself for having so many locks, for letting the paranoid get to him. Gavin doesn’t get it closed. There is a foot stopping it, pushing the door back open again.

His nightmare come to life.

He stumbles backwards, watches the door slam closed.

“Come on, I thought we were friends. You’re really going to run away from me like that? After all we’ve been through together?”

He hates it.

He hates that he’s crying.

He hates that it’s been almost two months but no time has passed and he is already crying and begging and pleading and wishing and wondering how he got here.

He thought he was paranoid. He thought he was stupid.

But here he is. The same face. The same hands. The same jacket coming undone, resting over the edge of a chair.

It was different before, when it happened in a basement it wasn’t infecting his apartment. His apartment was his safe space. In his head, he could go back in time and pretend he was still there. But now it’s inside of his home. The feet are leaving traces on the floor. The hand is poisoning everything it touches. If he gets out of this alive, he will have to burn everything to the ground, including himself. Moving away isn’t going to solve it. Every apartment he has will feel like a crime scene waiting to happen.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:09 P.M.

He tries to fight him off. Hitting and punching. Kicking. Scratching. Anything. Everything. He tries to get his knife from his pocket, but his hand is bent backward and it falls to the floor, kicked underneath the couch. He is too stuck watching it skid across the floorboards that he doesn’t see the knee coming up to his stomach, making him fall to the ground. He doesn’t see the hand pushing his face against the floor because he is too busy thinking about how this wasn’t supposed to happen again.

He escaped once.

That was supposed to be everything.

That was supposed to be all of it.

It wasn’t supposed to happen again.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:14 P.M.

He remembers before, trying to numb himself to it. If he could just exit his body, if he could just give up, he wouldn’t be so pathetic. He wouldn’t cry and let them know how weak he was— _ is.  _ They wouldn’t want him anymore after that. 

But he still does.

He cries.

And he cries.

And he cries some more.

Like a blubbering baby.

Those were words whispered in his ear once, sick and disgusting with hot breath on his skin as he screamed and fought. It didn’t matter if anyone could hear him, he needed to do it. He needed to scream and fight. But he can’t scream now. It is stuck in his throat, the shame and the guilt building up inside of his stomach at anyone knowing what is happening now.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:16 P.M.

“Stop fucking fighting. It’s annoying.”

But he does.

He still does.

He doesn’t scream—

Somehow, if he was heard here, it would make it worse.

If someone heard this—

They would know, wouldn’t they?

It doesn’t matter if it would stop it from happening. The damage has already been done dozens of times.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 7:21 P.M.

He pats Gavin’s cheek when he’s done. A soft slap against the side of his face that’s almost humorous.

“I missed you. Everyone else scattered, you know? It can be just you and me now.”

His stomach churns, but the man gets off of him, stepping away to pick up his clothes off the floor. He doesn’t even do anything about Gavin, it almost feels like an insult. That he was a prisoner once and he would fall back into that easily.

And it’s true.

Gavin doesn’t do anything. He is stunned and shocked into silence like he was every time before. Something always happens halfway through when he gives up. When he stops fighting. When he just cries in the quiet waiting for it to be over.

“You don’t have a job, do you?” he asks, getting up and walking toward the door. Locks clicking closed again. Locking him in. Keeping Gavin  _ in _ again.

Turning his home into a prison, not just a place where it  _ happened again. _

“Nobody will miss you. Just like nobody missed you before.”

His captor is just wandering. Looking at things on his shelves, touching the different things. The picture frames and the little figurines. He doesn’t have a lot of photographs. Mostly from when he was a teenager, when he was in college. Him and Tina, with their faces pressed together wearing matching New Year's glasses. Elijah bent over a book, the lighting in the window making it look moody and professional. Things that made him happy. Things that still made him happy.

“Your brother is cute. Not as cute as you, though.”

_ Not Eli.  _ Not Tina. Not Chris.

Not the only people he has kept pictures of. Not the only people that have ever mattered to him. The memories of his life have been horribly ruined, but his friends and family are still his. They are a piece of himself that he has kept alive. They are his only hope.

The man’s hands trail around the edges of the frames, picking them up, destroying a little piece of his life again. Gavin pushes himself to his feet, quiet, careful. Moving to the kitchen, his hand reaching for the knife left by the sink. Heavy in his hand. He never realized how heavy it was before. 

_ Not Eli.  _ Not Tina. Not Chris.

He is turning back to Gavin by the time Gavin reaches his side and the knife hits his shoulder hard. He seems surprised, stumbling backward and hitting the shelf. The contents on it rattle. Souvenirs from stupid high school field trips clatter to the ground, picture frames fall forward.

The anger that was missing before is back again. The anger that got snuffed out by fear the second he saw his face has been revitalized, igniting inside of him and he would scream if he didn’t want to get caught like this, and he takes advantage of the shock the man has on his face.

He thought Gavin wouldn’t fight like this, and he was wrong. He thought because the extent of Gavin’s fight was just a few kicks and punches, he wouldn’t take a knife and do this. To stab him again and again, losing count at some point and not caring either way. It feels like a hundred, and he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t stop until his arms are too tired to hold the knife up again, until even both hands on the handle and the pressure of his weight isn’t enough to push it through the skin and fabric of his shirt. The blood is soaking through his clothes, staining the wooden floor, reaching the edge of a rug that Tina helped pick him out.

Staining everything about his home. Ruining it even further. Making a mark upon his once safe-space.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 8:53 P.M.

“Connor?”

“Gavin?” he asks, shocked. Surprised more than he thought. He didn’t recognize the number, but he recognized the voice.

And he recognized the fear in the voice. The shaking quality of it. The broken way it says his name.

_ Connor? _

He has heard his name said like that too many times.

“I need your help.”

“Okay. Of course. Where are you?”

  
  


**April 14th ** | 9:12 P.M.

He knocks three times on the door, listens to the sound of each heavy-duty lock move out of place and the door opens.

He doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t Gavin standing in the doorway with blood dried on his skin, soaking his clothes and his body. Looking more like a mess than he had before when Connor first found him. Somehow, he looks worse.

“Gavin?” he asks, scared of the answer.

“Come in,” he whispers. Not urgent. The fear has left Gavin’s voice since their phone call. He looks numb. Distant. Not entirely in the realm of reality anymore. Like he’s greeting Connor in for a dinner party.

He enters, closing the door behind him fast. “Gavin—?”

“I can’t stitch my hands closed,” Gavin says quietly, sitting down on a chair by the counter. “I cut my hands. I forgot that it happens. I didn’t think I did. It didn’t hurt, at first. Everything hurt, it wasn’t… I couldn’t pinpoint it. But I can’t stitch them closed now. I need your help.”

Connor isn’t looking at him. He’s looking at the body on the ground. He is looking at the blood seeping across in a large pool. The face has been mutilated beyond recognition. Connor has had his fair share of blood and gore, but it is strange seeing a body like this. So shocking in its position among keepsakes and comforting home decor. Shocking because it was Gavin, because it’s Gavin’s place.

“What happened?”

Gavin laughs, something short and small, “He’s an old friend.”

“Gavin…”

“Stop saying my name,” he whispers.

He nods, moving closer to Gavin’s side. A hand reaching out toward him, coming to his shoulder before Gavin jerks away. He’s sitting on the chair, looking at his palms. Slices among the skin there, fresh blood pooling in his hands.

“I’ll help you,” Connor says. “Just tell me what happened.”

  
  


**April 14th ** | 9:15 P.M.

So he does.

He lies, about parts of it. He doesn’t want Connor to know what happened, two yards away. Gavin just says that he recognized him on the streets. That he was followed home. They they fought in his apartment. That Gavin won.

_ Won. _

Is that what it was?

Did he win?

  
  


**April 14th ** | 9:21 P.M.

“You’re the same as your brother, aren’t you?” Gavin asks as Connor cleans him up. A rag drawn gently across his palms, stinging the cuts there.

They aren’t as bad as they look. They’ll heal fast. Not as deep as they could’ve been. No need for stitches. But Connor could, if it was necessary. He has a suture kit in his car in case of emergencies, and it has come in handy. And he considers lying, just to get Gavin to a hospital. He needs to be in one. He looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks.

“What do you mean?” he asks quietly, fearing the answer to this question, too.

It has been that way for the last hour. Every question he asks he is terrified of the answer. Knowing what the lie would be and knowing what the truth is, but needing it said out loud. Did Gavin kill him?  _ Yes.  _ Why?  _ Because he was one of them.  _

“Niles was a hitman.”

_ Oh. _

“He told you that?” Connor asks, almost saying it like Niles is lying about it. He doesn’t mean it that way. More like he’s surprised that Niles would ever admit it to anyone. They are sworn to secrecy. Even him and Hank dance around the subject, despite knowing what Connor is. It isn’t that he thinks Niles would try and keep the secret for the company, just that—

He’s surprised Niles ever bonded with anyone enough to tell them.

“Not exactly, but I’m not an idiot. He thought I was. Everyone does.”

“I don’t,” Connor says quietly.

“You do,” he replies, looking over to the body. “I killed someone. I’m an idiot. And I called you, not the police. Because they think I’m stupid, too.”

“Gavin—”

“It’s okay,” Gavin whispers. “But you are, aren’t you? That’s why you were at the house?”

Connor debates lying, but there's no reason to. Gavin saw him with the gun. He saw him shooting. He knew Niles. What’s the point in pretending? Gavin called him here to help. A stranger. Maybe Connor owes it to him to tell him that he is.

So he nods, not because of the obligation. Not because he feels guilty, as though he played a part in this other than being Niles’ brother. But because he doesn’t care. Because he thinks, if given the choice, he would’ve killed the man himself. He is a hitman, he will help clean this up, he won’t lie to the only person that Niles trusted enough to tell him his name. Connor trusts him, too, intrinsically.

“Good,” Gavin says softly.

“Good?”

“You can help me,” he replies. “With the others.”

  
  


**April 14th ** | 9:57 P.M.

_ The others. _

It rings in his head as he deals with the body. Packing it up in a suitcase and taking it down to his car. Rolling up the rug and carrying it down. He has Gavin change and shower, taking the towel and the clothes, shoving them in a plastic bag with anything that the blood could have touched. The rug in the bathroom by the tub, the towels hanging up on the wall. He takes everything he can.

He doesn’t want to leave Gavin alone but he doesn’t think Gavin can handle leaving the apartment. He also doesn’t think Gavin wants to be sitting inside of a crime scene, but there’s little he can do. He can’t do both. He wishes he could. That there was a safe space for him to exist in-between.

He drives to the edge of the city to a safe house Hank set up for him in case his apartment ever got to be too dangerous to go to. He stores the body in the freezer. He’ll have to come back to deal with it better. He knows someone that can help, and if she refuses, he can deal with it himself. He doesn’t want to waste that kind of time tonight. But he watches the clothes and the rug burn until they’re nothing but ash. The flames flickering around the fabric as his phone rings.

“Are you coming back?” Gavin asks quietly.

“Do you want me to?”

There’s silence on the other side of the line. Something telling him that Gavin wants to say yes but can’t admit it. There’s this strange feeling in his stomach, something telling him he needs to do something. Something other than helping Gavin with  _ the others. _

Tracking them down. Killing them. Gavin doesn’t know their names, but he wants his revenge. That much was clear. He didn’t count the stab wounds on the body, but he would guess it was near thirty. So much anger condensed down into one weapon, stabbing and slicing so fervently that his hands were torn up from the effort.

Gavin doesn’t say anything, but Connor can feel it. A thousand questions and fears sitting between them.

“He knew where you lived,” Connor says, providing Gavin with an excuse. “You probably shouldn’t stay there.”

“Where do I go?”

“You can come to my place. Pack some stuff up. I’ll be there in an hour to pick you up, okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers. Quiet enough that Connor barely catches it.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 10:31 P.M.

He didn’t think Connor would come back for him, to be honest. He expected to sit on the steps waiting and waiting and nothing would come of it. He thought Connor would abandon him. He thought Connor wouldn’t have even shown up to begin with, or that he would call the police once he stepped through the door. He expected, even after Connor left, that there would be a knock on his door two minutes later and the cops would be cuffing him, shoving him inside of a car and taking him away.

But he’s here.

Connor is here.

Saving him again.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 10:45 P.M.

Everything is so fucked.

So fucking stupid.

So messy.

But he doesn’t regret it.

He doesn’t feel okay again, but he feels a little bit better, a little lighter, a little more relieved.

Everything is fucked, but at least one person that hurt him got what they deserved in return.

Fuck justice.

He just wants more of them dead now.

  
  


**April 14th ** | 10:59 P.M.

“You can have the bed.”

“Okay.”

  
  


**April 15th ** | 1:47 A.M.

The dark is comforting.

For the first time in six months, the dark is comforting.

The shadows letting himself pretend he exists in a void.

Pretending, again, that he is someone else, somewhere else.

This time he pretends he’s dead. He was the one who died tonight, or maybe he died a long time ago. It doesn’t really matter. He pretends he’s dead and he doesn’t remember his name. He just lays there in the dark, his eyes adjusting to the shadows and taking away his void of nothingness, and he lets it. Replacing his imaginary death and afterlife with focusing on the details of the wall. Exposed brick and all their jagged edges, illuminated by the light of the street lamps from the window. The curtains pulled back, the blinds left open.

He focuses on it instead of what happened. The little details of a small apartment belonging to a hitman, but the morph and they shift fast. Pulling him back again and again to blood, to a dead man on the floor, ruining the rug Tina helped him pick out, ruining the pictures of his brother and his friends. Ruining the rock he got on a field trip, the seashells he picked up at the beach, the porcelain figurines his mother left behind when she died. The dark was comforting for two minutes before he remembered how bad he was at pretending, and he is thrust back into his own reality once more.

  
  


**April 15th ** | 4:03 A.M.

“Gavin? Are you awake?”

He closes his eyes, but the image is there. Blood and gore.

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“Are you okay?”

He almost laughs. But even a fake sarcastic one is too much effort to do. Instead, he feels a groan building up inside of him as he hides his face against the pillow. He knows it will develop into a scream if he stays quiet, if he thinks too much about how not okay he is.

“No,” he replies softly.

“Do you want to talk?”

“No,” he says again.

“Is there anything I can do?”

He shakes his head, even though he doesn’t think Connor can see him in the dark. And then he sits up, after two hours of laying here in the dark, he gives up on trying to sleep. “Can I shower?”

“Yeah—Of course. Yeah.”

  
  


**April 15th ** | 4:22 A.M.

He doesn’t feel clean. He scrubs his skin until it’s raw, leaving behind red angry patches. Every time he turns the water off and gets out, dries, dresses, he turns around again and repeats the process. Back into the water. Either too cold it makes his skin feel like ice cubes or so hot it feels like it’s burning him alive. He sits on the floor for extended periods of time, letting the water pool around him, letting it cover up the fact he’s crying.

He is so fucking tired of crying. He can’t ever seem to stop.

  
  


**April 15th ** | 4:51 A.M.

He looks so tired.

Connor wants to help him, and he doesn’t know how.

_ The others. _

How many others?  How many people hurt Gavin? How many people took from him again and again? How many people were implicit in it, standing by and doing nothing to help him? And h ow did Connor end up here? It’s like all of his memories have been washed away and replaced with only this. Gavin standing in a room with blood on his clothes and a dead body behind him. Like nothing ever truly existed until tonight. Nothing before matters compared to now.

Connor kills people for a living. He executes them for cash, but this—

_ This is different. _

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” Gavin asks quietly, standing by the side of the bed, staring at the blankets like he’s afraid to lay down again.

“Why would I be?” Connor returns.

Gavin smiles. Something barely there. Something sad and angry and existing for a split second.

“I killed him,” he whispers. “No restraint.”

“You already know what I do. What I am.”

“This is different,” Gavin says, echoing Connor’s thoughts.

This was not a murder that he was hired to do. This was a man flooded with anger and fury and taking his revenge out on someone that hurt him. And maybe that’s why it doesn’t matter to Connor. He isn’t afraid of Gavin because he doesn’t believe he’s a crazed killer. He has been around crazed killers. He has slaughtered them. He has helped them.

The thing is—

Gavin isn’t really all that different from the people Connor meets and the people he hurts and the type of person he really is. Raised for this. Raised to let the only emotion he feels to be the relief when someone finally stops fighting from fiber wire around their neck or drops when their neck is snapped. Connor has only ever taken jobs at the ICA when it was contracts to kill targets he felt has deserved it in some way. Maybe not death, maybe they didn’t deserve something like that, but the world is a better place without them.

But it doesn’t change much. In his head—

It changes very little.

A person is either a killer or not. Once they cross that line, there is no going back.

“Do you think I should feel guilty?” Gavin asks, finally looking over to him.

And his first thought is—

No.

He doesn’t.

Not at all.

Not even a single sliver of pain for the person that Gavin killed. Connor would have even done it himself.

“Do you?” Connor asks instead.

“No,” he whispers, and his voice cracks on the word. “I wish I did. I can’t—I can’t—”

“Gavin?” he stands, ready to make his way over to him, but Gavin takes a step back when Connor gets within a few yards.

“I can’t—” Gavin tries again, stuttering the same words out again and again. “I can’t fucking feel anything.”

  
  


**April 15th ** | 4:55 A.M.

He’s lying. Vaguely.

He just doesn’t want Connor to know how angry he is. How it resides in his bones, taking place of the fear. They keep falling back and forth. Red hot anger keeping him awake, ready to hurt anything and everything. Even himself. And then it switches to cold frozen terror, paralyzing him on the spot. Remembering everything. Every detail. Everything that could get him caught, either by police or by the others.

And he doesn’t know what to do, because when he doesn’t feel either of those, he just feels deadened nerves grasping for emotion so they don’t die off entirely. He is feeding himself with pain and then he cuts himself off and he can’t decide what’s better.

He always remembers as a child when people would joke and laugh and ask if they had to choose between being and pain and feeling nothing at all, what would they choose?

And Gavin always chose the numbness.

Who would choose the pain?

But then he realizes, in these moments when he can’t feel anything but either of the options, he still chooses pain. He chooses pain because the numbness is terrifying. It is terrifying in an addictive-like quality. He understands why people do drugs and they drink. It’s an escape. It’s an escape from feeling. It’s an escape from anything and everything they want to leave behind. And he wants to escape. There was nearly an hour of numbness tonight, after the man died, after he called Connor, when he sat there thinking about how even though he knew his palms were cut open and they were bleeding, the pain didn’t really sink in until now, when the gauze wrapped around them have been replaced again.

“Gavin?”

“I’m tired,” he replies. “That’s all. Can we go to bed?”

“Yeah,” Connor replies. “Of course. Do you want the light on?”

He wants to say no. He wants to not look like a child. But his emotions are swapping from anger back to terror again, and he nods. He is scared of what he’ll see in the dark. He is scared of what is going to happen to him once he closes his eyes again. 

He is scared of waking up tomorrow.

He is scared simultaneously that this is a dream and that this is reality.

He doesn’t know what he is going to do when either of them prove to be the truth.


	3. Paralyze

**April 15th** | 11:34 A.M.

He’s a killer.

Gavin is a_ killer. _

It’s the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up, blinking his eyes open to the darkness of the apartment, watching Connor in the kitchen pull on a jacket, taking a water bottle from the fridge. Gavin pretends to be asleep, but he watches Connor leave him alone in here with his thoughts, echoing the same thing again and again.

_ Gavin is a killer. _

And one of his abusers is dead.

There is a breath of a relief, there is a tension of guilt.

Not who he killed, not why he killed, but that _ he killed. _

Not the victim, but the act. Gavin is a murderer, and he can only say that much. He cannot say _ but they hurt me, but they tortured me, but they were going to kill me _ just _ I am a murderer. _

Big red letters in his head, like they have carved themselves into the delicate skin of his abdomen, right next to _ I was raped. _

<strike> _ Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. _ </strike>

He squeezes his eyes shut, hiding underneath the blanket from the words like they exist in the room instead of inside of him. Like it is a monster in the closet that will leave him be if he hides under the covers and not like a brand on his body marking him as something no one could ever want again.

  
  


**April 15th **| 11:38 A.M.

Connor does his run around the block. Something short just to get the energy out. He doesn’t want to be gone for long. He doesn’t know how Gavin will react when he wakes up alone. Maybe it will be a blessing and maybe it will be a curse, he can’t tell. But he needs to run. He always runs. Past the shops that are starting to fill up when usually he is out much earlier, when they start to open, past the cars in traffic headed to work, past the park with the teenagers running to school or back home before they get caught out of their beds. It is a later run, and the city is already too full of life, but he runs and he runs and he runs and he thinks about whether or not he should help Gavin at all. If he could. How he could. It’s weird to think that he is trying to keep someone from killing someone else when they are rapists, torturers, animals. Monsters. He is not trying to keep them alive. Connor wants them dead, too. He just doesn’t want Gavin to be like him. So much blood on his hands he can’t see anything else but red now.

If he had found Eddie sooner, if he had gone to that place earlier, he could’ve stopped this from happening. He could’ve prevented the extent of it. It’s not his fault, logically he knows that. The contract came in two days before Connor showed up there. Hank gave it to him the day after, making sure that it was valid. Connor spent one day watching the apartment, trying to get an understanding of the guard’s schedules, to see if Eddie was actually there. But he had blueprints of the building. He was told that Eddie was there.

And he wasn’t. And Connor feels guilty in some way. Not just that Connor could’ve stopped this, even if it was only one day sooner, but that Niles was a part of it, too. Niles led him here. Connor wouldn’t have taken the contract if it didn’t have Niles’ name in the details. And if Connor had held onto Niles just a little tighter, maybe this would’ve never happened. Niles wouldn’t have met Gavin. Gavin wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Connor wouldn’t have met him, either, but it’s not as though the sacrifice of whatever their relationship is now wouldn’t be worth saving someone like Gavin from the trauma he endured.

And the body in the freezer. The blood on the ground. Gavin’s apartment is not something he can ever turn back to. Not anymore.

Connor pauses at the edge of the park, pulling his phone from his pocket. He pauses the music, Gill Chang turning into quiet turning into the sounds of birds and people and the city life falling in step right behind it. Connor sifts through his short contact list and dialing the number, listening to it ring on the other end.

“Anderson speaking."

"This is Connor—"

"I know. Caller ID. You ever heard of it?"

Connor smiles to himself, "How do you think I always avoid your calls?"

"You assume I think you have any other friends than me. I know you don't," Hank says. "Do you need something?"

"Information on someone."

"Who?"

"You have to promise you won't ask about them first."

"I won't, I won't," Hank replies. "Who is it? New boyfriend?"

"As if I had an old one," Connor sighs. "His name is Gavin Reed."

"Need everything I can get my hands on?"

Maybe. Maybe it would be nice to have it all. Maybe it would be a breach of trust. But he doesn't know anything about the man in his apartment except that he was with Niles, and he hardly knows the extent of that relationship.

"Just the highlights, okay?"

"Okay. You sure?"

"I'm sure," Connor replies. "I have to go. Email it to me?"

"Of course. Talk to you later, kid."

Connor nods to himself, hanging up and moving one contact below Hank's, clicking it and listening to it drone on. The voicemail picks up, like it always does but it is harder this time to say the words, "Hey, North. I need your help."

  
  
  


**April 15th **| 12:15 P.M.

“You’re back,” Gavin says, still on the bed, still wrapped up in blankets. He had carefully wandered around the apartment while Connor was gone. Forcing himself from the fortress of blankets and pillows to investigate the countertops (marble) and the coffee table (dark wood and shiny silver bars) and the bookshelves (stuffed full of science fiction and poetry) before coming back again.

“You’re still here,” Connor returns, saying it almost like it’s a surprise. “I thought you would’ve left.”

“Nowhere to go. And you were going to help me, right? With the others?”

“No,” Connor says. “Finding an apartment. Getting some things from your place. You don’t have to stay here.”

It sounds nice. Having his own place again. But—

He realizes how empty he feels alone, how the numbness settles in and the fear takes over and leaves him unable to move too fast. Like his bones are broken, his joints aren’t working right. Like his entire being is just a few seconds behind.

“You’re kicking me out?”

Connor offers a smile, “You can stay, if you want, too.”

“How nice. Hitman with a heart of gold?”

He shrugs, “Do you need anything? From your place? I can take you, or I can go by myself. Or we can go together.”

He’s so awkward. Like he doesn’t know how to be human, only machine. It is borderline endearing. It is much more preferable than the blank, almost empty feature and actions of Nines.

“I can make a list.”

“Okay. Good,” he nods, standing in the middle of the kitchen, turning his keys over in his hands. “I called someone. To help.”

“What?”

“She cleans up crime scenes for the ICA. She’ll make sure no one finds out.”

“And the others?” he asks again. He needs Connor to help him. He can’t do it on his own. He won’t be able to find them. He won’t know how to get away with their murders and he needs every last one of them dead.

Connor lets out a long sigh, but says nothing else, which speaks volumes. 

“Con—”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea. You can get away with killing one, but all of them? The more the bodies—”

“I don’t care if I get caught. As long as they’re all dead. Send me to fucking prison for all I care, just help me.”

“Fine, but how do we find the others?” Connor asks, and his conviction is weak. “I’m sure they were warned and got away. You only saw him by coincidence—”

Gavin shakes his head, pulling his legs up to his chest, “You kill people for a living. You work with a company that organizes it. I know how these things work. I know you can help me find them.”

Connor is quiet, setting the keys down against the counter with a clatter as he leans back, hiding away, but there is nowhere to hide. This apartment is a small one-room with the only illusion of space caused by the lack of walls separating them. There is nowhere for him to go, but to straight up and conceal his face behind the fucking pans and pots hanging on the rack in the kitchen.

“Please,” Gavin says finally, quietly. The word is like poison to him, but it doesn’t feel so awful to say it when it is someone like Connor hearing him voice it, when it is not muffled by tears or a hand on his mouth, when it is not said with a scream so loud and broken that it makes his throat raw and his words come out hoarse and lost after. “Please help me.”

Connor is quiet, making him wait. Looking everywhere but Gavin’s face. Thinking and thinking and thinking and—

“Okay. I’ll help you.”

  
  


**April 15th **| 1:53 P.M.

Gavin makes a list, sitting on the bed with a pen in his hand, taking hours to scribble down the things he wants. It’s such a small list, the only things he can think of are his laptop and his phone, both left behind when the only thing in his head was to get out of his apartment and never look back.

He didn’t even pack any clothes. When he showered the night before, he put the same ones on that he had worn here, and when he woke, Connor gave him some that fit poorly. The legs of the pants are too long and they sit rolled up around his ankles, but the slip down constantly, making him trip when he does leave the one spot he’s called his. The hoodie is too big, too—something that he doesn’t even think would fit Connor properly, but he is glad for it. He’s glad for the long sleeves and the too large torso that hides his body and conceals him.

When Connor isn’t looking, he finds himself pressing his face against the fabric against his shoulder, breathing in the soft scent of fresh linens. Different from the strawberry scent of the shampoo and body wash in the shower, both things he wouldn’t think to associate with Connor.

For some reason, he feels like all hitmen should be like Niles was. Smelling like metal and gunpowder, like they are a bomb about to go off. Maybe it’s the fact they’re twins. Maybe it’s the fact someone who kills for a living shouldn’t be able to have artificial strawberry fragrances embedded into their clothes and their skin, but blood and bleach.

But he does like it.

It’s a nice change. It’s a nice difference.

It makes him forget sometimes, that he is where he is. That Connor’s job is killing people. Maybe that’s why Connor picked it out, too.

He hands the list off to Connor when he’s done. Specific clothing items noted down. Things like the hoodie, like the sweatpants. He is used to wearing jeans and t-shirts. Lounging across his apartment in them, typing away on the keyboard of a laptop that has all the white printed letters rubbed away and missing because he spends too much time on it. But he doesn’t feel like he can go back to that. It feels like reverting to someone he isn’t anymore.

Every time those men touched him, every time they looked at him, every time they came into the room with their weapons and their wicked grins, he felt a piece of himself die. At first, it was just the past. Pushing him further and further away from who he used to be. And then it stole from his future. Telling him he would never be able to be anything but a victim. And then, finally, they took from who he is now and left him as a shell that doesn’t know how to act anymore.

He is wrong and broken and not quite himself. Gavin used to like being alone, he used to revel in the quiet nights. Now he can’t stand the thought of being like that anymore. Like they will appear in this apartment and he will turn it into a murder scene, too.

“Can I come with?” Gavin asks quietly, because he doesn’t want to risk Connor not asking him, even if it eats away at his insides. Something grating against his past self that never asked questions, just forced himself into a pack of friends or an event. He didn’t ask, he just did.

Now he can’t stop the question from forming, tumbling out of his lips in a whisper like he was taught by the people that held him captive in a basement for six months.

_ Six months. _

It still feels like a shock to hear it. Longer than he thought and so, so much shorter than he could have ever imagined. With how much they destroyed him, he would’ve thought it would take longer. Gavin would’ve thought he was stronger than that.

He was wrong.

“Of course.”

  
  


**April 15th **| 2:36 P.M.

Gavin is quiet in the car ride, but he fiddles with the radio. Flipping through stations and never landing on one specific genre of song. He jumps from classic rock channels to pop stations and again to alternative music, mouthing the words to the song but never making them much louder. He hides it behind his hand, but Connor catches glimpses of it.

He stays in the car when Connor reaches the apartment, leaving it idling with a talk-show host discussing the weather and previous holiday, like they have something new to add but they just repeat each other again and again every month every year. _ Isn’t it wild how fast the time passes? Easter feels like it should be in just a few more weeks! Hard to believe it already happened. _

Connor doesn’t ask if Gavin wants him to leave it running, he just does. It won’t take him long to pack the stuff in a suitcase and bring it back down. It will just be harder to sort out the specifics of what will happen to Gavin’s apartment later. There’s no point in keeping it rented out if Gavin is never going back, but there is a sliver of fear that they’ll get caught.

North is good at her job, but that doesn’t mean she can make it completely spotless. There is always traces of evidence, whether from the cleaner that got rid of the last speck of blood or from the spots missed in the grain of the wooden boards.

She’s waiting for Connor by the door, leaning against the wall beside it as he takes the keys from his back pocket and reaches her side.

“How bad is it?” she asks quietly, doing away with the pretenses Connor always tries to uphold. He needs some semblance of normalcy, and North has never cared for unnecessary conversation.

“It’s not great,” he replies. “Bloody.”

She rolls her eyes, muttering something under her breath that sounds like _ captain obvious. _But he doesn’t know what else to say. Connor has seen every state of a crime scene in his thirty-three years of life. From not a speck of blood as the result of poisons and overdoses to gore splattered across every surface in a room when a body was pushed into a wood chipper.

He doesn’t know where this lies on the spectrum. There is a lot of blood, but his brain could be fooling him. Making him recall the spatter on Gavin’s face and clothes, the wounds in his hands, the knife that was coated in it—

“He stabbed him twenty-eight times,” Connor whispers.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she replies. “What happened?”

He shakes his head, a refusal to answer. North always asks. It’s the one question she cares about. Whether or not the crime she’s helping cover up is going to be morally bad. It is more of a gray area than someone on the street might anticipate, but Connor works for the ICA because all the victims deserve their deaths in some way or another. CEOs that are responsible for polluting water sources, doctors that kill their patients, gangs that kidnap men and keep them held in a basement for six months.

“He deserved it,” Connor replies, pushing the door open. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Promise?” she asks, looking away from him to the room.

“Promise,” he says, stepping inside.

  
  


**April 15th **| 2:38 P.M.

It is bloodier than he remembered, despite his best efforts to take as much of the evidence away as possible. He watches North pull on a pair of gloves, setting her kit on the floor as she sets to work. Picking up things from the shelf that he hadn’t thought about grabbing before.

“Where’s the body?” she asks.

“A safe house.”

“Do you need me to take care of it?”

He nods, leaving her alone, needing to get away. It isn’t the death itself, it isn’t even the victim that is making him feel uncomfortable here. It’s Gavin. It’s Gavin who he helped get away from these people but didn’t help _ enough _. Gavin, who he knew might never recover but never expected this to happen. Gavin, who wasn’t a killer before he ended up in Connor and Niles’ lives.

He packs up Gavin’s things fast, leaving North alone in the apartment with his things and the scent of bleach following him out the door as he takes the stairs two at a time just to get away from the building.

_ No _, he thinks. Gavin will not come back here, and neither will Connor.

  
  


**April 15th **| 5:04 P.M.

The laptop is like an old friend again, set down on the counter of Connor’s kitchen. The long wait of being stuck in a car alone over with. He would call it torture if he hadn’t actually suffered from true torture already. Not from the boredom, but from the feeling of being trapped, the feeling of having nowhere to run. It only settles in when he’s alone and it escapes in long breaths and sobs that he struggled to contain and control when he saw Connor exit the apartment building.

He failed, he knows that, but Connor didn’t comment on it. He bought Gavin a hot chocolate on the way back. Gavin doesn’t even like hot chocolate unless there’s snow on the ground and the promise of Christmas coming soon, but it was nice. For a few minutes, it distracted him with the heat of it in his hands, with the warmth that it spread across his insides.

And now he is here, watching Connor type in his Wi-Fi password that’s a string of incomprehensible numbers and words that makes his own passwords look pathetic and weak in comparison.

“They train you for that?”

“Hm?” Connor asks, looking away, stepping back from the laptop. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“I’d rather not go into detail,” Connor says. “If we can keep my job out of the conversation, I’ll be a lot more willing to help you.”

“Just like Niles. You two pricks really are brothers.”

Connor’s expression doesn’t shift. He looks serious, displeased. Gavin doesn’t care. There is this strange desire in him to lash out. Not as a response to what happened to him sometimes, just to feel like who he used to be. He keeps going back and forth on whether or not he is craving the person he was before and thinking it too impossible to ever have that again.

“I didn’t know any of their names,” Gavin says, switching topics and sitting in the chair, happy to have his laptop back to himself. “But I knew Eddie’s. I thought… I thought we could look him up. See who the people are that work with him.”

“Known members of his gang?”

“Yeah,” Gavin says. “I just… thought…”

“No, it makes sense. Do you need help?”

He shakes his head, “I can do it by myself. I can hack into the records from his arrests. And the others should be in the database, too. The…”

Gavin keeps trailing off, keeps struggling for words. It is too personal. It would be easy if it happened to anyone else. He could say the words. He could get them out. He could even bring himself to type in the name Eddie in a search bar, but right now his hands are trembling and he is struggling to remember how to get them to move in the direction of the keys that will spell out his last name.

“The nature and severity of their crimes point to the fact they’d be in the system already,” Connor says, finishing his thought for him. “Are you sure—”

“Yeah, just leave me alone.”

Connor stands there for a moment, watching him, “I’ll be in the living room.”

Gavin nods, watching him walk away. The sense of privacy shattered when all it takes is a look over his shoulder to see Connor on the couch, flipping through a book that Gavin doesn’t believe he’s actually reading, just faking it. Blending in. He always felt like Niles was watching him when they spent time together, but apart. When they both had their own tasks at hand but stayed in the same room.

He knows it was a lie before. He was never important enough to Niles to be watched by him.

  
  


**April 15th **| 5:17 P.M.

It takes him ten minutes to fully type out the name and it takes a fraction of a second for the results to load, for the picture of him to be staring back at Gavin and he lets out this choked whimper before he closes the window out.

It’s just a picture, but he can’t do it.

He can’t look at him.

  
  


**April 15th **| 5:18 P.M.

“Connor?” he whispers.

“Yeah?”

“Can you—”

“Yeah. Of course.”

  
  


**April 15th **| 5:26 P.M.

He wanted to be strong.

He wanted to be fierce and courageous.

He wanted to be a force to be reckoned with.

He wanted to be violent and angry and able to fight back.

But he isn’t. He’s not. He never was.

He is just a broken boy that has nothing left inside of him to lose until it’s there—

In the back, in the dark—

His tiny fragmented soul still being chipped away at again and again. A picture proving he still has it, but such little left it is a wonder he is still standing.

  
  


**April 15th **| 8:05 P.M.

There are dozens of accomplices that have been linked to Eddie and his gang. Rap sheets that list nearly every crime thinkable. It takes hours for Connor to look through it, not well versed in hacking enough to understand Gavin when he tries to explain how it can be narrowed down. He stands on the other side of the counter, watching Connor watch the screen.

“You’ll have to look at the pictures,” Connor says quietly. “To tell me which ones are them.”

He nods, but he doesn’t budge.

“Gavin—”

“I know. Just give me a second.”

He does. But the seconds roll over into minutes and the minutes feel like they are slowly stretching out into an hour, and Connor doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t do anything. He just waits. He waits for Gavin to work up the courage to come around the counter and when he does, he leans against Connor. At first, it is something that feels too personal and too close of contact for them with how little they know each other, but then—

Then it is Gavin collapsing against him when he looks at the nine of the dozens of pictures that Connor has assembled for him to look through, needing Connor to help keep him up as he brings a hand up to his face, hiding his eyes from having to look at them.

“The first one on row two.”

“Okay. None of the others?”

Gavin shakes his head, “No. Just him.”

  
  


**April 15th **| 8:06 P.M.

“If you give me a few days, I can get more information on him.”

“I don’t want to know his name,” Gavin says quietly. It’s his only request in the last three hours. Three hours of complete silence filled with the sounds of dinner being made and a television on in the background. Children’s cartoons, reruns of old shows that Gavin used to watch as a kid. Neither of them are paying attention to it, but it is sound other than silence, and it helps.

“That’s fine,” Connor replies. “We don’t need to know his name.”

But Connor does.

And it is etched in the back of his head. Carving away one of the aliases he used to use. Marking the name off his list with such a heavy hand that it scars whatever lies underneath. The name will always be tainted by the face, the name will always be connected to a person that did something like this to Gavin.

To anybody, really.

But it is different now.

Connor isn’t used to people around him being alive, being hurt.

“How long will it take to find out where he is?”

Connor considers this. Gavin is a hacker, he can get into the DPD records, but they don’t always provide reliable information on home addresses for parolees and criminal records. He has to call Hank. He has to work up the courage to tell him he needs to find him. He could lie. He could say that it’s to hunt down Eddie still. That finding this man would provide information to complete the contract.

But he doesn’t want to lie to Hank. In the last few months, he has closed himself off of a friendship that once helped him not feel so broken and alone in fear of letting a secret slip, out of guilt that he didn’t admit it in the first place.

“A week, maybe. Is that okay?”

Gavin nods, “A week.”

  
  


**April 17th **| 4:33 P.M.

“I have to ask you something,” North says. He hears the familiar sound of a car door closing, keys jingling, an engine readying. “About your guy.”

“My guy?” Connor asks, glancing toward the bathroom door. Gavin disappeared inside for a shower five minutes ago. It will likely be an hour before he’s back. He is always in there for a long time. The shower starting and stopping at least five times if Connor listens to the sound of it close enough. And sometimes he does. Sometimes he is scared of how much Gavin closes himself off and shuts things out that something bad is going to happen.

“Yeah. Gavin?”

“What about him?”

“What do _ you _ know about him?”

Connor sits up, his eyes shifting over to his own laptop, sitting on the kitchen table, lid closed. All of his secrets trapped inside of there. Files about Gavin’s history hidden underneath a hundred passwords that he is still worried Gavin will crack.

“Why?”

“Can you just answer my question?”

Connor sighs, “His name is Gavin Reed. He’s a hacker. He has a brother. His parents are dead.”

“And that’s all?”

“North, what’s wrong?”

There is quiet on the other end of the line. The faint noise of a train, the sound of lightning that he first hears through the phone before it echoes behind him. The rain doesn’t let up, flooding the streets, turning them a blur of black and blue with umbrellas up over people’s heads.

“Nothing,” she says quietly. “Does he know about you?”

“Yes.”

“Connor…”

“He knows what I do. That’s enough.”

Connor would never tell anyone else any more. But he wants to. It sits in the back of his head, reminding him that he cannot keep this all held up inside. The ICA gave him a therapist when he first joined the company. He went every week. He talked about what they did. It was pried out of him, but they already knew. They had files and video evidence. They just wanted to see if he could say it without falling apart.

And he could.

That’s why he stopped going.

The ICA doesn’t need him to have perfect mental health. They just need to know he’ll get the job done and won’t spill their secrets, and that’s what he does.

“Can I ask you something else?” North says, pressing on.

“Sure.” Not like she would listen if he said no.

“How did you find him?”

“I was on a case. He was there.”

“He was a target?”

“He was a captive.”

North lets out a long sigh, “Okay. Can I see him? Can I talk to him?”

“You want to meet him?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

  
  


**April 21st **| 2:38 P.M.

He doesn’t have a reason to deny her.

She shows up a few days later, hair resting around her shoulders in loose curls. He has never seen her wear her hair up unless she’s cleaning up a crime scene. He has never really seen her unless she was cleaning up a crime scene, Connor realizes. She doesn’t wear the usual garb that she puts on when she does her job.

“Can you leave us alone for a few minutes?” North asks, looking up to him.

Gavin is on the couch, trying his hardest to look like he isn’t watching them and eavesdropping. Connor didn’t preempt this meeting with any kind of warning to Gavin. He just said North was coming over. He doesn't know why she's here, he just knows he trusts her.

He didn’t think North would kick him out, though.

He looks back to Gavin, waiting for his response. He knows he heard the question, and when Gavin nods, Connor leaves. Walking slowly to the door like he is giving them both a chance to rescind this. When he exits, the door closes behind him in a quiet thud.

Connor pulls his phone from his pocket, turning it around in his hands. He should call Hank. Not just because he promised Gavin that he would get the information on the target but because the days he has spent not picking up his phone and talking to one of his only friends.

He dials the number, waiting for him to pick up.

"Hey, Connor."

"Hi," he says quietly.

"You need something again, don't you?"

"Maybe I just wanted to talk."

"Is that so? About what?"

He clears his throat, walking around in a small circle in the hallway, "Gavin."

"Oh? So he is a new boyfriend?"

"Hank—"

"Kidding. What's wrong?"

"Do you remember the mission with Eddie?"

"Yeah."

"He… he was there. He knew Niles."

"One second."

There's a click, a strange tone in the distance. Cutting off the ICA from listening in. Hank only does it when Connor talks about trying to find Niles. This time it's different. The ICA can figure this out if they tried hard enough—Connor just never gives them a chance to doubt his place in the company. 

Until now.

"Tell me exactly what's happening."

There's quiet on the other side, a small sigh finally escaping Hank, "I know."

"You know?"

"The ICA has me keep tabs on your financial statements. And you asked me to look into him."

_ Oh. _

"So—"

"I know you paid for his hospital bills and I know you frequent a cafe not to far from his place. And I know that his apartment is being rented out to someone new and that he has no known location. He's with you, isn't he?"

"Are you mad?"

"No," Hank replies. "Shit, kid, it's your life. You want to take care of him? Go ahead. But don't let him get attached if you can't handle turning him away. You're moving next February. Cut this off before then."

"I can't."

"Why? Because he boned your brother?" he asks. "You can't do this, Connor, I know you. You get too attached. Especially when Niles is involved."

"No—" Connor replies. "No. That's not it. I promised him I'd help with something."

"What?"

"The people there… Eddie and the others. They held him captive. They hurt him."

"And?"

Connor bites his lip. Murder is fine if it's for a contract. It's even more forgivable if there are accidents that happens when trying to fulfill a contract. Killing people, even if they deserve it—

The ICA will hate him. They will consider revoking his privileges, firing him, maybe even putting him straight into retirement.

"Hank," he says carefully. "I am helping him."

"You're helping him _ how? _And if you're not fucking clear with what you're doing, I'm not going to try and save your ass."

He's quiet. He doesn't feel right telling anyone what he knows. It feels more like a violation of Gavin's privacy than just knowing what family members he has and his previous job.

"They… assaulted him. Repeatedly, I think. They tortured him. He was there for six months."

"He wants revenge."

"Yes."

"Fuck, Connor, and you agreed to help him?"

"I'm on his side. They don't deserve to be alive."

"Hell…" he whispers. "You need help finding the men, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Give me their names. I'll find them. And Connor?"

"Yes?"

"Don't fucking fall in love with him, kid. It won't end well."

  
  


**April 21st **| 2:40 P.M.

“My name is North.”

“Gavin,” he replies.

“Can I sit?” she asks, but she is already moving to the chair, resting her bag down on the floor beside her while he nods. “I know what happened to you.”

He feels—

Every bone in his body turns into solid concrete. Every vein and blood vessel freeze into nothingness. Every part of himself tense, ready to crack.

“I know—”

“How the fuck do you know?” he asks, cutting her off. But he does know how she figured it out. She cleaned up the crime scene.

And he feels sick, because he has to wonder what evidence was left behind on his floorboards that reveal what happened to him. His face pushed against the wood, the wounds on his body threatening to reopen. New bruises to cover where the old ones had just started to fade.

“I know,” North says again, this time a statement, this time her face hardened. “And it fucking sucks.”

He looks away from her.

This stranger—

This woman that he has never seen before—

This person that is staring at him with this look in her eye that tells him things he doesn’t want to know. That he isn’t the only one in this world tainted by people taking what they want and not caring about how much a person screams for the opposite.

And even, Gavin thinks, in his case, for death instead.

She knows. She knows and he didn’t even have to tell her.

Does Connor know, too? Does the whole world know?

“You didn’t deserve that,” Gavin replies.

“Neither did you,” she says. “Look, I can’t… I’m not good with words. But if you need to talk to someone, you’re not alone. That’s all I’m trying to say here.”

“I don’t need help.”

“You do,” she says, and it’s with a small smile. “But I get it.”

“Do you?” he asks, because he never knows how to word it, what to say.

The desire to reject everyone trying to help him. Like the denial will somehow erase what happened to him and he’ll be okay again. Damaged, but okay. Damaged, but not broken. Not destroyed like he is now. Every time Connor helps him with even the smallest thing, he wants to shove him away and tell him he can handle it.

“Five years ago,” North says quietly, reaching for her bag. “Somebody helped me, too. And I hated it. That I needed to be saved. I didn’t want to be. I wanted to save myself and I couldn’t. And I beat myself up about it every day. I couldn’t help the other girls and I couldn’t save myself. The only option was to keep letting it happen so the others didn’t have to suffer, too. We survived. At least we can say that for ourselves, can’t we?”

He doesn’t know. He is still trying to. He cannot see himself as someone who has done anything other than fall deeper and deeper into pain and the will to give up on it all.

“I hated talking to people about it and you don’t strike me as someone who wants to talk either,” she says, pulling a journal out of her bag. “But writing helped. It can be messy. It doesn’t have to make sense. No one will judge you."

“You want me to keep a diary?”

“I want you to not have to drown in this by yourself,” she says, holding it out to him. “You don’t have to talk to me or Connor or a therapist or a stranger in a fucking support chat room. Not yet. But you can’t keep it all inside of you. Just try it.”

Gavin looks from her to the book. Clean and sleek and not yet ruined by anything. Brand new, he thinks. Blank and untouched. He reaches for it, grabbing it gently, feeling the faux leather beneath his fingertips, running his index finger along the elastic strap that holds it closed.

“My number is in there,” she says, standing up. “If you ever need me. I’m good at listening.”

He nods, staring numbly at the black as she walks away. The kindness of her actions and her words making him feel even more undeserving of this tiny slice of help she has given him.

And everything inside of him is screaming that he still does not deserve it.

  
  


**April 22nd **| 3:59 P.M.

Connor doesn’t tell Gavin anything about the man, and Gavin doesn’t need to know. He knew him as The Torturer. The one who started out as the person who hurt him the most.

Eddie wasn’t the first. It was _ him, _the Torturer. Gavin doesn’t know who kidnapped him, but he knows during the first month of him being tied up, the only face he saw frequently was his. Sharp features, a snake tattoo curling up the side of his neck. Poorly done, Gavin remembers that. He remembers trying to focus on it instead of the pain of staples being pressed into his skin or nails driving his hand into the wooden armrest of the chair, the question asked over and over again.

_ Where is Nines? _

He didn’t know, and he said as much. The first day, Gavin even had part of himself still. He was able to swear at them. He was able to be mean and cruel and vicious and it felt deserved and it felt nice to finally get all of the vile thoughts inside of him out even if he couldn’t aim them at Niles for leaving him behind, tossing him out like garbage, never looking back because Gavin never really mattered to him.

It didn’t last long.

When the man held out Gavin’s hands and started to use a box cutter to trace the lines of his palm. Deep enough to make him bleed, to make him hurt. He lost everything he had left in him and he started to scream and beg for them to believe him.

The first month, it was just the Torturer that was hurting him. And then he left, and it was The Prisoner. And then the abuse shifted when they started to believe him.

They knew he didn’t know where Niles was. They knew that he was never told. They knew that Niles left him.

And they turned him into something else. Gave him a use while he was still there. The torture didn’t stop, it just mutated more and more out of control.

And Gavin needs him dead. He needs him dead like he needs them all dead.

  
  


**April 22nd **| 11:23 P.M.

Gavin tries to write. He thinks about it when it’s dark and Connor has fallen asleep. When the only light comes from the dim lamp that has been set on his nightstand. Gavin curls up next to it, the journal in his hand, opened up to the first page where North has clipped a ripped page with her number written across it, her name neatly printed beneath it.

He turns to the first page and he stares at the blankness of it and thinks about how to start. And it isn’t that there aren’t any words coming to his mind, it’s that there is so much they are all fighting about what to put first. Where to start. How far back to go. To his childhood, when he and his friends ran around pretending to be rock stars? To his teenage years, when they laughed and played Guitar Hero to prove they were good enough to make it to the big leagues?

What about in college, when his dreams were dashed away and he turned to computers and coding and trying his best to be good at something? Unfurling ones and zeroes, switching them around, learning everything his brother was learning but using it for evil?

He remembers the days when him and Tina would laugh about trying to hack video game companies so they could be the ones with the leak that would earn them thousands of dollars. He remembers going from being an idiot kid to being an idiot adult to being all alone to being a victim again and again.

Does he start there, when he was a child and everything was full of hope and promise?

Does he start now, when he is already broken and nothing is left anymore?

Gavin decides to write nothing at all, closing the journal, tucking it away again in the drawer that Connor has emptied for his things and he tries to sleep, but the words are still swimming through his head, telling him he should have tried harder.

  
  


**April 23rd **| 4:05 P.M.

“He works at a butcher shop here in Detroit,” Connor says. “I have the address.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“Gavin,” he says, and he says Gavin’s name like it is a statement, a warning, a _ think this through, stop what you’re doing. _“I can do it. You don’t need to.”

“I do,” Gavin says softly. “I do. It has to be me.”

  
  


**April 23rd **| 6:45 P.M.

He doesn’t want Gavin to be here. He doesn’t want Gavin to be the one to do it. He doesn’t want Gavin to be a part of this. Connor can do it. One bullet to the head and he’s gone. Dead. North can come by, clean up the mess. It won’t even be a problem. It will be solved before anyone can even realize what had happened.

But Gavin is stubborn and he has his shoes on before Connor can tell him to stop, to stay behind, and he is following Connor to the car, slamming the door closed behind him.

“I’m coming with you. _ I _ have to do this. _ Me. _Not you. It means nothing if it’s not me. Don't make me say it again."

  
  


**April 23rd **| 6:57 P.M.

They sit outside of the butcher shop in silence as it closes up. Customers coming and going, workers leaving. The man stays late, cleaning up the counters, sweeping up the floors. When Connor had told him he worked here, Gavin had assumed he was the one chopping up the meat in the back. That it’s where he learned all of the awful techniques he used on Connor.

But he is just a janitor, mopping up the floors, spraying the windows and wiping them down.

And it doesn’t seem to matter how long Gavin watches him, he cannot regain movement in his body. The moment his eyes found the man, they froze there. They have barely blinked. His body has tensed up, half leaning forward. His back aching in the need of relief to rest back against the seat but he can’t. He can’t move. He can’t move his fingertips or his toes. He can hardly breathe.

Gavin is paralyzed here, watching him.

Watching him carry on as if nothing ever happened. As if he wasn’t there a month ago shoving Gavin’s face against the cement floor and telling him that his crying and his screams were sexy.

This was a mistake.

All of this was a dream, wasn’t it?

Thinking he was saved—

It was just another one of his fantasies.

It isn’t real.

He is still tied to that chair. That’s why he can’t move. Isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

  
  


**April 23rd **| 7:07 P.M.

“Gavin?”

He doesn’t say anything. It is worrying. Startling.

“Gavin, are you—”

“No,” he replies, not letting Connor finish the question. “No. I’m not.”

“Do you want… do you want me to do it?”

Gavin is staring out the windshield, not moving an inch. Barely moving a muscle.

"It has to be me," Gavin whispers. "It has to be."

"We can come back."

Gavin shakes his head. "No. We have to do it now."

"Gavin—" Connor says, quietly, worrying that the worry in his voice is too much. "I can do it. I can do it for you. I can make sure he's dead. You don't have to do this."

“He hurt me. I need him to know it's me killing him. I need him to suffer."

"I can do that, Gavin."

Gavin's eyes finally move away from the shop, stopping on Connor's face, "You'll kill for me?"

"Yes," he says, and he doesn't even think it over. There is nothing to consider. It is only a _ yes. _Even and clear. "I'll make him suffer, I promise."

Gavin forces out a laugh, broken and small, "You falling in love with me then?"

He is trying so hard to make a joke. He is trying so hard to make this tension break.

"Don't bet on it," Connor replies quietly. "Maybe if you hadn't buzzed your head."

Gavin smiles but it falls and he leans back against the seat, "Wait a few months then. Maybe it'll grow back."

**April 23rd **| 7:10 P.M.

Connor was trained in torture. He was thirteen when it started. He was good at it, even. He knew all of the spots a human’s body could handle being cut or burned and it wouldn’t cause them to bleed out.

But he doesn’t torture. He likes his gun. A silenced pistol and one pull of the trigger and the body is down. Snipers are his preferred method on missions. It keeps him distant. It keeps it feeling a little less like he is the killer, even though he knows it isn’t true.

Sometimes it just isn’t a possibility, though, and this is one of those times.

He won’t be able to torture the man as much as he deserves, but Connor knows he can make his death painful. 

He didn’t bring all of his tools with him. If he had, he would’ve chosen the fiber wire in his case with spikes that dig in and thin metal bands that would cut the man’s neck leaving it messy and bleeding. It would be painful, it would be the closest to torture that Connor would risk in the middle of the night when someone might catch them.

But instead, he takes a knife. Sharp and sleek, a silver blade with a black handle. Heavy in his hand as he pushes the door to the shop open.

“Hey, bud, sorry we’re—” the man pauses. “Wait a second… I know you.”

“I doubt it,” Connor says, tilting his head to the side. “I just have one of those faces.”

“No—” he returns. “You’re Nines, aren’t you?”

He shakes his head, more to himself than to the man.

Nines.

_ Nines. _

They know him as Nines.

“You have me mistaken,” Connor says, taking a step closer to him. The man takes a step back, hitting the counter.

A coward for someone who did what he did to Gavin, maybe to countless others. Connor doesn’t believe that Gavin is his first victim. Not in the slightest.

He deserves a much more painful death than this.

“Look, just—”

His hands come from his pockets, the knife turning over in his palm. He isn’t listening to the man talk anymore. A pathetic attempt to tell him that he never cared about trying to find Nines. Again and again he says that he’ll keep quiet, he’ll let it go—

But he isn’t begging and he isn’t pleading and Connor almost wishes he would. He deserves for his last moments to be like that. On his knees asking for forgiveness. But he’s not. He’s trying to treat Connor like he’s his friend.

Connor is not his friend.

"I'm not here about me," Connor says, voice cold and smooth. Each word calculated and calm. "I came because of Gavin."

"Gavin? That little bitch?" He laughs.

_ He laughs. _

"Yes. Him."

"Look, I was just—"

"Doing what Eddie told you to do?"

"Yeah," he laughs again, a nervous chuckle. "I mean, you don't defy Eddie, man. You know that. Sides, what the hell do you care? Don't like to share or something?"

His jaw clenches tight, "Share?"

"Yeah, I mean I get it. He's a nice piece of ass but he's nothing special. Eddie fuckin' loved him, though. Never heard him get so excited before. Think it was the you part that turned him on."

Connor looks down at the blade in his hand, the insides of his stomach twisting, "You deserve worse than this. You all do. Gavin deserves to skin you alive himself."

"W-What?"

The blade in his hand is sharp and it slides through skin like butter. One stab against his stomach, pulled out fast and slashed across the throat in a quick motion when the man falls to his knees.

He has had careful training with the knife. He has been taught since he was five years old how to use it. He has been taught since birth how to kill and hurt, and it feels nice to have it put to use on someone that truly deserves it.

The man falls to the ground with his hands on his throat trying his best to stop the bleeding, his cries coming out as choked sobs, blood spilling from his lips. It is a painful death, but not painful _ enough _ . It is a long death, but not long _ enough _.

Connor doesn’t stay. He pockets the knife, knowing he will have to burn this coat to get rid of the evidence. A shame, because he really liked it, although it’s his own fault. He shouldn’t have gotten it out of his closet. It’s not cold enough for such a heavy layer. Usually, he could send it to the ICA. They have cleaners that will get rid of every drop of blood on it, make it brand new. No worries about evidence being found years and years from now. But he can't send it without explanation, and he will always remember this man's blood on it.

He’ll just have to buy a new one, then.

  
  


**April 23rd **| 7:14 P.M.

Gavin watches from the car. There is no horror in the killing, there is only relief. When the man falls to the ground, Gavin lets out a breath and it feels like every bit of tension in his body unwinds with it.

_ Dead. _

The man is dead.

And so quickly, too. Or not so quickly. He is still twitching on the floor when Connor reaches the car.

When Connor stepped out of the car, he had worry written across his features. Worry for Gavin, he thinks, but he finds it hard to believe. They have spent more than a couple of weeks around one another.

But Connor, when he crosses the road, Gavin sees the shift. It is subtle and small. The way he walks, the way he holds himself. Gavin notices it in the way he talks, his face blurry and distant from here but _ different. _More like Niles. So much like Niles that Gavin almost finds it hard to believe that it’s Connor until he watches the shift again as Connor walks back to the car, the way his features fall from smooth and unbothered to eyebrows knitted together, the car door pulling open as he sits down in the driver’s seat. Back to the Connor that Gavin recognizes.

It is such a subtle difference, but it is also so large, so hard not to notice, so hard not to file it away.

Connor becomes a different person when he kills, almost. Like everything inside of him shuts off and the only focus is the task at hand.

Like a machine.

More machine than human.

  
  


**April 23rd **| 8:17 P.M.

“They won’t link it back to you?” Gavin asks.

Connor shakes his head, trying to keep his eyes on the salad sitting in front of him. It seems hard to eat now. It always feels strange to eat after he kills someone. Something so depraved followed up by something so human and typical.

“They’ll likely think of it as a gang killing. There’s no need to try and clean it up. It’ll be considered an execution.”

Gavin nods slowly, “And you?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

Connor nods, looking to the coat hanging on the hooks next to his others. Dark blue wool, heavy and warm and comforting.

“It’s just… weird.”

“What, not getting paid for the kill?” Gavin asks, and he says it like a joke but it falls flat. Like Gavin is incapable of telling a proper joke and Connor is incapable of actually hearing it.

“In the simplest of ways to put it, yes.”

“What’s the more complicated way?”

“You,” Connor says, and he doesn’t elaborate.

He doesn’t know how.

He doesn’t know how to explain that he doesn’t think he’s ever killed someone and it felt… _ personal, _almost. Not like Gavin is his friend. Not like they really know each other. But their connection, their link. The terrible things that happened, that are still happening. 

Connor has killed murderers and torturers and rapists before, but this feels different. He has never truly killed for someone before. It feels like Gavin has been woven into his life now and there is no undoing it. There is no way Connor can ever go back to who he was before he met Gavin. He will always be stuck in the after.

He doesn’t think he minds it.

It is nice having someone here. It is nice talking to them. It is nice pretending to eat dinner with them while they push their food around their plates and try to pretend that an hour ago, they didn’t murder someone. Gavin is different than North and Markus. His relationship with them is purely professional, with meetings only happening once a year or less.

Nobody has spent this much time with Connor since—

Since he was twenty-two and he worked with Niles. When it was just the Eighty-Nine duo killing anybody that they were told to, no questions asked.

Connor prefers the after now to before then. He prefers _ this _ , he prefers _ Gavin. _

It almost makes him wonder what would happen if his life didn’t end up this way. If he wasn’t trained to be this machine from the moment he was born. If he could’ve had a life that wasn’t surrounded completely and utterly by death. If he would still be existing in this after with Gavin.

Part of him hopes so.

Part of him doesn’t wish for that at all. He thinks if he and Niles weren’t raised this way, Niles would never have been involved with Gavin, and Gavin would’ve never been kidnapped and tortured in retaliation.

And—

They would have real names.

Not Eight and Nine. Not Connor and Niles, but the names printed on their birth certificates, the names thought up by their mother and father who wanted nothing more than for them to come home and fill the cribs waiting in the nursery.

“Are you alright?”

Connor nods again, stumbling through his thoughts to try and find something they can do to distract themselves from this, from the life he was robbed of. From the life that Gavin was robbed of.

  
  


**April 24th | 3:51 A.M.**

_ I killed someone today. _

_ It is not the first time I have killed someone. _

It is a good way to start it, Gavin thinks, but it’s a lie.

He wasn’t the one that killed the man. Connor was.

And maybe it is a weird place to begin, but his hand is moving, unable to stop himself. The need to get out all of the words, the thoughts, the feelings coming to him too quickly. Scribbling across the page in a scrawl that looks nearly illegible. Words spelled wrong because he is thinking too much on how fast he needs to get to the next one and it is easier to let the loop of an _ n _ carry over into an _ m _. His hand crampS up fast but he pushes through the pain because North was right—he cannot keep this helplessness inside of him.

How frozen with fear he was. How much he wanted the man to suffer more. How still, he feels guilty. Not for the person who died but for the one who did it. Connor might be a hitman, but this is not his revenge he is after. It’s Gavin’s, and he made Connor implicit in it.

So he keeps writing. More and more and more. Skipping around the details of what the man did to him, what any of them did to him, and instead focusing on how little relief he felt when the man stopped spasming against the floor when he bled to death, the last drop turning the floor that he had spent ten minutes mopping up dirty again.

It didn’t help.

It stopped Gavin from being frozen entirely in place, but it didn’t help otherwise.

He still feels like he has lost himself. He still feels like he is wandering around an empty void of a city, trying to discover whether or not he should try to piece himself back together again. The question of whether he deserves happiness getting easier to answer the more he thinks about the next person he wants dead and what he is willing to do to ensure it.


	4. Ricochet

**June 1st ** | 9:34 A.M.

It’s been a month.

A month since Connor killed for him. Spring has come and gone, even if it is technically still lingering, the heat of the sun is far too bright to count as anything but summer now. They haven’t done much of anything at all in the last thirty-seven days. Gavin doesn’t know whether to be grateful or not. It is almost a relief, not seeing the men, but it feels like they are at a standstill. Connor leaves once a week for missions, staying out for a few nights at a time before coming back early in the morning, passing out on the couch when Gavin is pretending he can sleep in this apartment by himself, but really he can hardly breathe when he is left here alone for more than a few hours at a time. Really, during the times that Connor is gone, he lies awake in the bed trying his hardest to sleep and only finally being able to when his body is too exhausted to stay up and torment itself with thoughts and images.

And yet time is still slipping by him and there is this fear inside of him that is saying that they will never get them all. The men will get away.

Sometimes it feels like a race against them—

Kill them before Gavin finally succumbs to the need to kill himself.

**June 5th ** | 12:06 P.M.

“Leaving again?” Gavin asks, watching Connor pack away his things.

Gavin never realized how much went into a piece of luggage for a hitman. No weapons. Not on flights. He doesn’t ask how Connor gets his things he needs to kill people. He assumes there are other hitmen, working for the same company, ready to lend out their pistols and their knives. Connor isn’t a serial killer—he does this for money. He doesn’t need a specific weapon that would have his initials carved into the handle or whatever. But maybe he does. How the fuck would Gavin know? Why would he even care?

“It won’t be more than a few days.”

“You say that every time.”

“I know,” Connor says, standing up. “I can call you. If you’re worried.”

“Worried?” he lets out a small laugh. “Why would I be worried about you?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he says. “Although, it would be sweet of you to worry about me.”

“You can handle yourself,” Gavin says. “Just don’t let the plane crash.”

“I’ll try my best.”

**June 7th ** | 8:39 P.M.

He’s tired, but he can’t sleep. It’s too early in the day for his body to even give up on this. But he lays there, thinking, the phone at his side.  _ Call me if you’re worried. _

About what, himself? Gavin is going to call Connor because he’s worried about something he might do? And what would Connor do in response, hop on the nearest plane and get back here to take care of him? Gavin doesn’t need to be babysat and he doesn’t need to be watched like he’s a child learning what fire is for the first time. He’s an adult. He can take care of himself. They did horrible things to him but it doesn’t make him an imbecile infant that doesn’t know how to sit up on his own.

But he holds the phone at his side and he knows Connor’s number is the second contact—right underneath Chris—and how easy it would be to press the call button and talk to him for a little while. Make him not feel so completely and utterly alone in this place. Hearing Connor’s voice would fill the emptiness enough that he might be able to sleep. Does that count as worry? Does that count as needing Connor? Does it count as needing to be saved once more?

Gavin sets the phone aside, pulling the covers of the blanket over his head, hiding underneath the fabric.

He is fine. He will be fine.

  
  


**June 8th** | 3:49 P.M.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I need to ask you something,” Connor says. “About the case in February.”

“Again?” Hank asks. There is a small space of silence, the quiet  _ click  _ on the other end. “What is it? You falling in love with him?”

“No,” Connor says. “There are therapists with the ICA, right?”

“Connor… what are you getting at?”

He looks out through his car window, watching his target walk down the street. She seems like a happy, nice woman. Connor knows she isn’t. He knows what she’s done and what she’ll have to pay for it. She lives in an apartment down the street, just far enough that he can barely make out the door. Just far enough that he will be able to recognize when the husband leaves and he can follow in after and leave her body behind for him to find. It’s a terrible thing. The world is made up of these terrible things. He had no part in it, and now he’s going to come home and find his wife on the floor murdered.

“Connor, are you there?”

“She killed her best friend in high school,” he says quietly. “And she got away with it.”

“What?”

“People do things we don’t expect them to. Terrible things,” he continues. “And sometimes they move on and sometimes they can’t.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“Yes,” Connor replies. “He’s not built for this. He needs help. But he can’t talk to someone when it’s a regular therapist. They won’t be able to keep his secret when he says that he’s killed people. They’ll lock him up. Especially if he shows explicit intentions to do it again.”

“How many are left?” Hank asks.

“Five.”

“Fuck,” he heaves out a sigh. “The ICA has therapists. You know that. But they only let spouses use them. You’re going to have to marry him if you really want him to get help with no repercussions.”

_ Marry him.  _ Marry him and have the legal confidentiality of not getting put on the stand. Marry him and be one step closer to the ICA letting him go. A husband would be proof of something to lose, something they can hold over him to keep him from turning on the ICA if the FBI and the government wanted to take them down.

Which they don’t. Connor doesn’t think they ever will. It’s not how the cycle of this life goes. The bad always win and the good always get trampled. It’s why Connor is still around. He is not good enough to be kicked to the curb. There is something rotten inside of him born in the days he and the others were told what a carotid artery was and how to sever it for the best kill. It grew inside of him when they found the stray cat that he and Simon kept in the basement and they were forced to learn the gravity of their mistakes when they loved something more than the kill.

It grew and it grew and it grew every time he let something awful happen.

“I have to go,” Connor says quietly. “Her husband just left.”

“Connor—”

“I’ll talk to you later,” he says, hanging up, knowing full well that he won’t. He won’t call Hank back again. He has turned into a selfish, using person that can only pick up the phone and call Hank when he needs help with Gavin. He can’t even be a proper friend anymore. He is consumed by this, wonder if the thing inside of him is growing or shrinking when he kills someone that Gavin points out in the line ups.

  
  


**June 9th ** | 5:09 P.M.

He thinks about messaging Elijah. Or Tina. Apologizing profusely and hoping that no questions will be asked. Eli won’t ask questions, Gavin knows that much. His absence from Elijah’s life has been so long now that sometimes Gavin stays awake at night struggling to remember what his face looks like, and he has to get up and go to the bathroom and trace the curves of his features and try to remind himself which ones he shares with his brother and which ones he shares with his mother. He doesn’t want to talk to either of them. He knows what kind of person he is. There is this deep-seated need in his stomach to talk and he won’t be able to tell Tina what happened to him and he won’t be able to use his trauma to manipulate Eli into forgiving him for what he’s done.

So he calls someone else.

Not Connor and not Elijah and not Tina.

  
  


**June 9th ** | 5:54 P.M.

The plate hits the wall and shatters into pieces. The satisfying sound of porcelain cracking, of it clattering against the cement floor and breaks into smaller chunks still. When the plate leaves North’s hand, her expression is almost blank.

Almost.

There is anger behind her eyes and there is a determination in the way her mouth is set. She is a fierce girl, full of fire. Gavin can see that from where he stands. She reminds him of Tina in that way. The stubborn nature of her personality, the ability for her to never really, truly give up.

“Is this where you go?” Gavin asks, leaning against the wall, watching her pick up a cup. “Rage rooms all across Detroit?”

“Yes,” she says. “I thought you might want to come.”

“To watch you throw plates?”

“You’re very funny,” she says, holding a plate out to him. He reaches for it, but she pulls it back at the last second. “Have you been writing in your journal?”

“Yes,” he says, but it’s a lie. Sort of. There has only been a handful of entries. Three of them being the same thing written in different ways. Trying to encapsulate his loneliness in words is an impossibility. There is not enough to explain the feeling in his chest when he needs someone but doesn’t want to admit it. Or can’t admit it. And there isn’t a way for him to say that he doesn’t want to be alone, but he desperately needs to be away from people. There is no way to describe how much he is trying and how much he is not trying.

North lets him take the plate, stepping back from the space, “Go ahead.”

Gavin turns the plate over in his hand. Cheap porcelain that reminds him of when he was in college and was too poor to afford proper dishes. He had two of everything, bought at Dollar Tree. His shelves bare and empty because his money started to funnel towards games and better hardware to keep them playing. Hacking became his life after Elijah called off what little remained of their band after Chris left it. The reminder of those days, of being told that they weren’t going to go anywhere, that they would never be good enough to be anything but what they were—stupid college students at a shitty community college—is enough to resurface some of the anger inside of him. It brings up all of it, the plate leaving his hand, hitting the wall and cracking into pieces.

He doesn’t know why breaking things is such a good release for anger. That uncontrollable need to destroy something. He is so used to turning it in on himself that he had forgotten the relief when something inconsequential is broken. Putting his feelings on the outside. Metaphorically destroying something that hurt him for years.

“Good?”

“Yeah,” Gavin says. “Give me another.”

“First,” North says. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Fine.”

“Have you told Connor?”

“No.”

“Have you gone to any groups, met with anyone to talk to?”

“No. Are you going to say I can’t break a stupid plate because I don’t have a therapist?”

“No,” North says. “I’m just nosy. And… I wanted to know what’s happening. With you. After him.”

“After I killed him, you mean?” he asks. His only saving grace in his life so far has been that North doesn’t know it was more than one man. She thinks it was just the person that broke into his apartment. Not all of the people in the basement. She doesn’t know the extent of it. “I’m fine.”

“Are you?” she asks. “Because I know killing him isn’t going to help. It doesn’t magically solve everything.”

“Yeah? How the fuck would you know that?”

“Because I killed mine,” she says, handing him another plate. “And it didn’t do shit.”

“Well,” Gavin says. “It’s not about feeling better. Is it?”

She watches him as he takes the plate, as he throws it against the wall. It is not as much of a relief as it was the first time. There is too much anger inside of him. There is too much of everything. He feels stupid and worthless. Every time he remembers how many people touched him he is reminded that there is likely not a single space on his body that wasn’t poisoned by them. It’s not even the amount of times they did it or the amount of people that it was. It would hurt even if it was once, by one person. It is just the fact that it happened, and he can never seem to scrub the feeling of their fingers from his body, and his mind is always preparing ways to torment him with this.

“How did you..?” he trails off. “I thought you said someone saved you.”

“Yeah. He did,” she says, crossing her arms. “He got me out of there. He didn’t kill him.”

“So you did?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

She smiles a little, and he can’t tell if it’s a real smile out of the genuine pleasure of killing someone or if it’s an attempt to break whatever this tension is that’s formed between them, “I chained him to a car and drove down this back road outside of town that nobody uses anymore. It didn’t fix anything but…”

“It helped,” he says, filling in the space for her. “Right?”

“Yeah. For a few days, maybe. A few weeks, tops. It didn’t fix anything. It still happened.”

“But it helped,” he repeats. For a few days, for a few weeks, it helped.

  
  


**June 11th ** | 5:58 P.M.

“You’re cooking?” Connor asks, the door to the apartment closing behind him.

He had gone on an afternoon run—started splitting it up into two so he doesn’t have to be gone so long. He’d come back the night before, not a single reaction from Gavin when he walked in. He didn’t expect any. He knows Gavin won’t admit it, but Connor sees how he reacts when he starts to pack his bags to leave. He sees the way his body tenses, the way he shuts down. He doesn’t need Gavin to admit he wants Connor to stay. Connor can see it. He was the same way, once before. Being alone is terrifying. Being forced into isolation is—

It brings back bad memories. Things he would rather keep quiet and under the surface. Things he doesn’t believe he can tell anyone, but things he thinks he has kept hidden for so long that one question would make his entire mask fall apart.

“You’re cooking sucks,” Gavin replies. He hasn’t moved from the stove, instead just standing there with a spoon in his hand, stirring a pot of noodles absentmindedly. “They didn’t train you for that, did they?”

“No,” Connor replies. “I’m good at baking, though.”

Gavin smiles and it is weak and it is small but it  _ is _ a smile, “Should’ve had you make garlic bread, then.”

“Next time,” Connor replies, and he takes an awkward step forward before he has to stop himself and turn the other direction. There is this pull he has, sometimes, to go to Gavin’s side. He thinks it is their close quarters. Their inability to completely and entirely separate from one another. Or maybe Hank is onto something with all his warnings about not falling in love.

  
  


**June 11th ** | 6:23 P.M.

“You’re right,” Connor says. “You are a better chef than me.”

“I think anyone is a better chef than you,” Gavin returns. He is trying to be funny. He is trying to be happy. He is trying to be positive.

If he can get a glimpse of that possibility, maybe it will prove real enough he can cling to it.

And Connor does smile, he even laughs a little.

It changes very little, except for the fact that Gavin feels like he has succeeded in something other than being a nuisance or a victim.

  
  


**June 12th ** | 8:02 A.M.

“He doesn’t live in the state,” Connor says. “He lives in some suburbs in Ohio.”

“The suburbs?” Gavin asks quietly. “Does that mean…”

“We should get a hotel room, I think. It would be better not to drive too late at night.”

“Connor,” Gavin replies, trying to keep his voice steady. “Does he have a family?”

“He has a wife and three kids.”

How funny. How absolutely incredibly hysterical.

Gavin is going to laugh. He is going to laugh so he doesn’t cry and he is going to laugh so he doesn’t break but it only comes out as a choked noise that sounds like he’s dying as he moves away from the couch, “They can’t be there.”

“I know.”

“They can’t—They can’t—”

He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

They can’t know their father was a monster. They can’t see his dead body. They can’t be hurt by this any more than him disappearing from their lives.

But they can’t worship a man that spent five months making Gavin pretend to do things he would’ve preferred to live his entire life never thinking about. They can’t just excuse his behavior and they can’t—

They can’t erase his trauma with their own happy lives.

“Gavin? Are you okay?”

He shakes his head, feeling tears slip down his cheeks, hot and burning him like they are scalding his skin.

“Can you tell me?” he says, sitting up, looking toward him, reaching for Gavin’s hand. “Can you talk to me?”

He doesn’t say anything, he just stumbles away toward the bathroom, the only place he can truly be alone in this apartment, and the door closes behind him, the lock clicking into place.

  
  


**June 12th ** | 8:05 A.M.

Before all of this, sometimes Gavin would jokingly refer to himself as a slut or a whore. It was funny, it was jokes he could pass between him and his friends. How he could be a little bit of a slut on his nights out into the town. How he might drink too much and make stupid mistakes. How he didn’t need romance in his life to be happy, because what could it provide him?

And when Niles stumbled along and Gavin was exposed to the possibility of love and thought he might want it, it was shut down, but it wasn’t shut down in the way that it had been before. Before, there was no proof behind his being single. There was only the fact that he didn’t try to date. There were thoughts in his head telling him he wasn’t good enough. But there wasn’t any proof to it other than Gavin tormenting himself that he would never be good enough to marry or have kids.

And Niles—

Niles was perfect. Gavin tricked himself into thinking he was perfect. He refused to see how their relationship was for its reality until it was too late. He kept believing that they loved each other.

Because here is how it started:

Niles needed a hacker, and Gavin was one.

Niles needed a place to stay, so Gavin’s apartment became his home.

Niles needed a person to fuck, so Gavin was there, willing and waiting and wanting.

Gavin fell in love with someone who only ever wanted him for his own gain, and he kept trying to make himself believe that if he altered himself enough, Niles would love him back. That he would stay because he wanted to, not because Gavin was convenient for him. He thought when they had softer moments together, when Niles let Gavin hold his hand or when Niles kissed him and it wasn’t a prelude to sex, that he was worthy of him. Niles felt perfect to him and now all Gavin can see is the broken pieces, and he focuses on them to comfort himself. Jagged edges of a human that hurt him instead of all the softer parts that made him yearn for Niles when he left.

It is better to focus on the bad. He can pretend that he is better off without the only person he loved.

But now—

After everything—

It is different.

Gavin has proof that he won’t ever be able to have that life. He cannot see a future for himself where he is lovable. He cannot joke about those nights out in clubs and he can’t call himself degrading words and laugh about it. He can only remember how they sounded from the voice of a man that made him sit on a bed and pretend to be a doting wife or a son or some damaging broken version of both. He was never himself. He was never allowed to be himself. Now he doesn’t even know who that is. There are a thousand ghosts of past versions of him rattling around in his skull, none of them sticking, none of them taking ownership of this empty vessel of a body.

  
  


**June 12th ** | 8:05 A.M.

“Gavin? Can you please open the door?”

He can’t. He won’t. He refuses.

“Please? Just talk to me. It might help.”

He can’t. He won’t. He refuses.

“I’m worried about you,” he says, and it comes out a whisper. Something Gavin barely catches. Not something he thinks he was meant to hear, but an admission of something that Connor hadn’t said before.

Words he doesn’t think he has ever heard out loud. Sometimes, only, written on a screen from people that he has refused to message back since he got out of the hospital. He has convinced himself that the messages mean nothing. That they are just pretending that they care.

And what does it matter if they believe he’s dead or alive?

He’s gone, and that’s all that matters.

He just wants to be gone.

  
  


**June 12th ** | 8:07 A.M.

Connor’s footsteps echo away from the door and he stays there, leaned against it with his eyes closed, with his hands pressed over his ears, trying to get the images out of his head.

Every single one of the people who hurt him had a twisted sense of humor when it came to degrading him. Him—Him, the Husband, the only one who ever gave him clothes to wear, put dresses in his lap or action figures in his hands. The one who forced like to play along with the Father. He liked to force Gavin to pretend he was eleven years old or that he had an engagement ring, but it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter because he was always smacked around, always called a slut and a whore and his legs pushed apart and told again and again that he shouldn’t have cheated on his husband, on his father, with all those other people in the basement like he ever had a choice to begin with.

He falls backwards, his head hitting the ground, snapping back into this moment. The ceiling above him dark around the edges for a moment before it fades away. Little impossible spots floating across his vision.

  
  


**June 12th ** | 8:08 A.M.

“Fuck,” Gavin whispers, and Connor is kneeling down, apologizing again and again as he helps Gavin sit up.

“I didn’t realize—”

“Did you pick the lock?” Gavin asks, shifting away from him, a hand on the back of his head.

“You wouldn’t let me in,” he replies. And he might not have opened the door so fast if he had known Gavin was leaning against it like that, but it feels cruel to make this Gavin’s fault right now, when it really isn’t to begin with. Connor could’ve waited. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Gavin says, but the tears have stopped. He isn’t crying anymore. “That fucking hurt.”

“I’m sorry. Let me see,” he says, shifting back closer to Gavin again, bridging the gap between them.

Gavin doesn’t move this time, just moves his hand away and lets Connor’s replace it, feeling along the back of his skull, fingers gracing the edges of a bump that makes Gavin lean away from his hand, which leads him closer toward Connor, which puts his face a few inches from his own.

“Sorry,” Connor says again, pulling back. “It’s not bleeding, though. Do you feel dizzy?”

“No. I just have a massive fucking headache.”

“I should get my flashlight,” he says. “Just in case.”

“For what?”

“To check your pupils.”

Gavin lets out a frustrated sigh, slapping Connor’s hand away from him, “I don’t have a concussion. Calm down. Jesus Christ, and you kill people for a living?”

Connor shakes his head, “You really like to latch onto that, don’t you?”

“What? That you’re an assassin?”

“I’m a hitman, not an assassin,” he says, his words sharp. There isn’t really a distinction, he thinks, but he has always had it in his head. A line that doesn’t get crossed. “I’m still a person and so are you.”

Gavin looks away from him, toward the floorboards, keeping his eyes off Connor’s face.

But he knows what he’s thinking. He is thinking about Niles. About how Niles can shut everything off, how he did, how he never turned them back on again. How his emotions have drained away and left nothing behind but someone that exists solely to kill. Connor didn’t want that. He clung onto his humanity even as they stripped it away from him. He had to relearn himself. He had to bring back pieces, smaller and smaller until he could be someone.

“Gavin?”

“What? You’re going to apologize again?”

Connor tries for a smile, but he doesn’t think Gavin is being funny right now, “Yes. I am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You’re forgiven. Can you stop looking like such a wounded puppy now?”

“No,” he says. “Please, just talk to me.”

Gavin is silent, shaking his head again. He won’t even say it out loud. Just refusing, like a petulant child.

“You can’t keep it all pent up inside,” Connor whispers. “It’ll destroy you.”

“It already has. Who the fuck cares?”

“I do.”

Gavin looks back to him, “You should stop.”

“Why?”

He sighs, pulling away from Connor, leaning against the wall to the bathroom, legs brought up to his chest, “Because it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I’m always going to be like this.”

“You don’t think you can get better? Have a future?”

“After everything?” Gavin asks. “No.”

“But you survived it,” Connor replies. “You survived it and you can survive this, too—”

“Did I?” he asks, voice sharp and angry. “Did I survive anything? Am I—Am I even alive?”

“Yes,” Connor says, chasing him down, moving back to him again, reaching for his body, his hands, holding onto them tight, pulling him forward. “You did. You are. You’re here. You’re alive.”

  
  


**June 12th ** | 8:09 A.M.

Gavin lets Connor hug him. His face turned against his shoulder, his eyes shut because it helps keep the tears from coming and it helps keep him from thinking about the expression on Connor’s face. The worry and the concern and how it never seems to fade when he is looking at Gavin.

_ You survived. _

_ You are alive. _

_ You are here. _

_ You exist. _

It doesn’t feel like it. It doesn’t feel like he has survived anything.

  
  


**June 13th ** | 3:43 P.M.

They sit in the car together in silence. It took seven hours to drive here. The radio plays an old song that was made in what Gavin guesses were the twenties. It would be comforting if he weren’t watching the man that participated in his destruction help a nine-year-old boy into a car and smiled as he waved goodbye to him. It would be nice, Gavin thinks, if he didn’t watch him kiss his wife on the cheek as she helped her children into a van, one of them kicking a soccer ball around in the grass.

It’s a nice day.

Bright and sunny. Warm and fun.

It would be nice if it wouldn’t be tainted by someone’s murder. Or maybe it is made nicer by the fact he is the one that’s going to die.  _ Bagwell.  _ Gavin glimpsed it on the file, and it’s written in faded old cursive on the mailbox.  _ Bagwell, Bagwell, Bagwell. _

“They’ll be gone for a few hours,” Connor says quietly.

“You think?” Gavin asks.

“Both of the kids will be at soccer practice, the mom always takes the baby with her when she goes shopping.”

Dad doesn’t watch his infant by himself. Instead, he smiles and waves and pretends he cares. Gavin wonders if she knows and that’s why she takes the baby with her. If she is aware of his predilection towards children, or if she just doesn’t want her baby alone with a monster, or if he is just the kind of father that does the absolute bare minimum when it comes to having children. Gavin’s father was like that. He wasn’t an awful, hateful man, but he would always call him and Elijah by the wrong names. He was hardly home, and when he was gone, he would always come back to argue with Gavin’s mom about whether or not he was cheating on her.

He always was. But he made up for it with jewelry and flowers and false promises.

“They seem happy,” Gavin says quietly.

“I don’t think so,” Connor replies. “He was arrested after the mom was attacked three years ago.”

“And you think he did it?”

Connor is quiet and Gavin watches him closely, the way his hands grip onto the steering wheel, the way he watches the van pull out of the driveway, “The charges were dropped, but… It’s hot outside today. It’s the start of summer. She’s wearing a turtleneck.”

_ Connect the dots. _

A game of trauma outlined in a picture book.

“Do you want to go in alone?” Connor asks.

“No,” he says, and he doesn’t provide more of a reason to Connor.

Gavin doesn’t want to tell him that he doesn’t want to freeze again. He isn’t paralyzed like he was last time, he isn’t fueled by adrenaline like the first time. Gavin’s anger is separate from himself now. It exists for the woman, for the wife and the kids. For the people that he was forced to pretend that he was, for the people that Bagwell was already hurting.

He doesn’t think this kill is going to be for him. Not entirely. It is going to be for them, too. But he can’t risk freezing. He can’t risk not being able to do anything when he gets inside and he doesn’t have a street and glass and metal to separate them. He needs Connor to come with him.

He needs Connor at his side.

He almost resents that. How much he feels like he cannot exist without someone that he is barely getting to know.

  
  


**June 13th ** | 3:48 P.M.

“Here,” he says quietly, handing him a pair of gloves. “You can’t accidentally leave fingerprints.”

Gavin nods, taking them and pull them on at the same time Connor puts his own on. He doesn’t even have fingerprints. They burned them off of him when he was a kid. Every year they pressed his fingers against hot metal to make sure they didn’t come back, or just did it to torture him. He thinks it was more of the latter.

He still wears the gloves. It feels like it helps the memory turn more fictional. As if he can convince himself that he needs the gloves out of necessity and not out of comfort.

  
  


**June 13th ** | 3:53 P.M.

Bagwell doesn’t get a chance to scream for help. Connor is slow and careful when he pulls the syringe from his pocket and it slides into his neck, the poison acting fast. He won’t be out for long, and Connor works fast. Tying his arms and legs to the chair he sits in, securing a gag over his mouth.

“Do you—”

“Alone,” Gavin says quietly. “I want to do it alone.”

Connor nods, but he hesitates by the door, looking between the two before disappearing out of the office, letting the door close behind him. Gavin is used to screaming for help. If he needs to, he can again, and he will not freeze this time. This time, it isn’t for him. It is for the little action figures that sit in the box of toys in the boy’s room, the ones that look identical to the ones that Bagwell threw at him when he refused to pretend he had a lisp. It is for the mother who has taken every single one of her children from the home when she could even if she didn’t have to.

He waits, leaning against the desk. Part of him wants to snoop. To look around at the golf clubs in the corner or the books on the shelf. To sift through the files on his desk or his computer. But he doesn’t want to find anything. He doesn’t want evidence of what he did to him or to the other boys. Gavin doesn’t know if he touched them, he just wants him dead, and he needs Bagwell to suffer, so he waits for him to wake up.

And besides—

The roleplay in the basement was proof enough. If Bagwell wasn’t hurting them yet, he was going to soon. Gavin was just a fill in. Somebody he could get away with abusing over and over again or filling in when he was away in Detroit. And maybe if Gavin was good with words or thought he could manage a speech that would help release some of the pain inside of him, he could tell Bagwell about how what he did was wrong. How it destroyed him. How it broke every piece of him apart. Maybe he could even piss Bagwell off by saying that it’s of no surprise how he could never finish when he wanted a little boy not a thirty-sex-year-old man playing at being a child.

But he can’t.

Gavin can’t say it and it isn’t just his lack of ability to form words together, it is his utter refusal to say this out loud. It is the desire that nobody knows what really happened to him. It is his worst fear, he thinks. He feels so much shame and guilt for every part of how they hurt him. He feels disgusted when his body reacted in a way that his mind was screaming against. He wants to kill himself when he thinks about how they could make him do whatever they wanted and they had no consequences but he is here, suffering and hurting and never able to heal or talk. And he thinks of how close Connor was to him yesterday, how nice it would be to maybe be hugged by him again, to have something. He can never have anything again, and it is _ all their fault. _

So when Bagwell wakes, he doesn’t use the pocket knife he retrieved from underneath his couch that failed him all those weeks ago. It would be over too quickly and he is too angry to let it be over this quickly. So Gavin takes one of the golf clubs instead, and he watches recognition fill Bagwell’s eyes. Who Gavin is, what he is here to do, what is going to happen, how his wife and his children will find his body.

And Gavin doesn’t care.

  
  


**June 13th ** | 4:12 P.M.

The golf club is sturdy, and he has managed a lot of hits with it before it breaks. There is a satisfying sound of bones breaking before it snaps in half, too, but there are others he can pull from, and he focuses on the sound of metal against skin and bone instead of the whimpers and muffled pleas.

_ What does it feel like to cry? To scream for help that isn’t going to come? _

_ What does it feel like to suffer? To know that the person hurting your isn’t going to stop because they don’t care? _

  
  


**June 13th ** | 4:39 P.M.

“Gavin, stop—”

Gavin pushes Connor away, and he stumbles back a step or two before he recovers.

“Gavin, he’s dead—”

It doesn’t seem to matter. Gavin is still hitting him. Over and over with the golf club at the body that he thinks must’ve died at least ten minutes ago, when Connor heard the muffled sounds come to a stop from outside the door. They had gagged him, but it wasn’t enough. Connor could still hear it. 

He reaches out for Gavin again, grabbing the golf club, twisting it out of his hand, prying it from his fingertips and letting it drop to the ground. He says his name over and over again, like a song. A string of  _ Gavin, Gavin, Gavin  _ coming over and over again. He’s crying, his face twisted and angry and red from the blood that has left drops across his face and Connor knows he is thinking what he thought a month ago.

The man deserves worse. He deserves far worse than this.

And Gavin deserved better. He deserved far better.

“It’s okay,” Connor whispers, even though he knows it’s a lie. His hand comes up to cup Gavin’s face, his fingers brushing the blood away in smears. “He’s dead. It’s over. It’s okay.”

  
  


**June 13th ** | 4:41 P.M.

He is dead, but it is not over and it is not okay.

It will never be over. It will never be okay.

But Connor is holding him with a tenderness that he wasn’t afforded before. Not hidden behind a man pretending to be soft, but someone really trying, someone being genuine in the way they touch his face, in the way they hug him.

“We have to go. We can’t stay.”

Gavin nods, but his arm slips around Connor’s waist and he holds him there for a moment, refusing to let go.

Bagwell is dead, and he feels that brief moment of relief like when the plate hit the wall and it shattered and there was a moment when he felt better. Not okay, but better. And he knows it won’t last. Just like when he stood there and felt the rage fill back in. One broken plate and one dead body isn’t going to make something okay forever.

But it is better. And he can cling onto this brief moment of relief for a few days, for a few weeks, at least.

  
  


**June 13th ** | 8:32 P.M.

Gavin falls asleep in the car on the way to the hotel, and Connor lets him. He tries his best not to wake him when he brings him inside, but it’s difficult to carry someone that isn’t a child, that is prone to nightmares, that wakes even when Connor is trying to employ every bit of training he has to walk silently. But it seems to work. Gavin doesn’t wake. Maybe it is those restless nights, all accumulating into his ability to stay asleep.

And then—

Then he wakes. The moment he is laid down on the bed, his eyes open slowly as he reaches out toward Connor’s hand, holding onto his sleeve, keeping him there.

“Stay,” he whispers.

So Connor does. He lays down carefully on the bed beside him, watching the golden and red light of the sun filter in through the blinds as the sun finally sets. They stopped at a gas station, changing out their clothes. Gavin let Connor wipe the blood off of his face like he had before, tilting his face toward the sun to make sure it was all gone. But they should still shower, they should still get rid of whatever evidence is left on them. The clothes they’re wearing now should be discarded too. There can never be too many steps made to ensure their safety. But Connor stays and he doesn’t say anything, he just watches Gavin as he closes his eyes, not quite giving away to sleep again. Connor thinks he is just trying to shut the day out of his head, just like Connor wishes he could.

Connor is terrified of what is happening between them. The thing that he knows is one-sided, the thing he never thought he would have. The thing he thinks Gavin had before with his brother, and it makes him feel almost sick to think that Gavin was with Niles before.

_ Niles _ , of all people.

He told Gavin his name. The names they pretended were real. The names they convinced themselves were written on their birth certificates. The names they tried to believe came from grandfathers and important people in their parent’s lives. Things that would carry importance onto them, but really ended up being nothing at all. Just names they clasped onto for their own personal reasons.  _ Niles  _ sounds like  _ Nines. Connor  _ doesn’t sound like anything. It was pulled from a book, from a character that did his best to overcome and beat the battle he was pushed into unwillingly.

“Why did you become a hitman?” Gavin asks quietly, breaking the silence, his eyes opening, finding Connor’s in the dark of the room.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Connor returns, letting that bubble of protection pop around him. It is incredibly easy to let it break, just like he thought. One question, and everything is at the forefront of his mind, screaming to get out.

“What do you mean?”

“We were taken when we were young.”

“By some evil government corporation?”

Connor smiles, “Yeah. Kind of. It wasn’t the ICA. It was a different… competitor in the hitman market. They thought they could train us to be the perfect machines.”

“And are you?”

“No,” Connor says quietly. “I would’ve left you if I was.”

“And maybe you’d be a good cook, too.”

“Gavin…” he says, trailing off, reaching out to him. His hand touches Gavin’s, trailing along the side of it, hooking their pinkies together. He is surprised Gavin lets him. He is surprised he did it at all. It feels too soon. It feels like he is rushing things.

He has never been in a relationship before. He has never even kissed someone. He is a virgin. He was left by himself the moment he had freedom, and that was a chosen isolation. He is reluctant to admit that he likes Gavin in this way, because he knows how Gavin is right now, and he knows if Hank knew they would argue about this. But Hank is right. Even if Connor knows the trauma will stand between them, he attaches to people easily, especially those that show him any kind of kindness that was confiscated with him along with his happy childhood and his parents and his brother.

“I can teach you,” Gavin says quietly. “How to cook. It can be my repayment for you helping me.”

“Okay,” he replies. “Sounds perfect.”

“Is it an even exchange?”

Connor nods, “Getting all of your secrets? I could be on Iron Chef or Chopped. I could quit this life of mine.”

“Don’t get excited, I won’t tell you  _ everything.” _

He smiles, finding it hard to hold back. He wishes more of their conversations could be like the latter half of this. Where everything isn’t constantly weighed down with something else. He likes it when Gavin seems happy. Of course he does. He would be a sadist if he liked Gavin better when he’s upset.

“Can I ask you something?” Gavin whispers.

“Sure.”

“Why are you and your brother so different?”

Connor shifts on the bed, looking away from Gavin’s face to his hand, the one he has curled up next to his mouth, like he is trying to hide the way his lips move when he talks. Connor wants to pull it away, but he is scared he is already risking too much with their close proximity and the fingers they have entwined at their sides.

“The company wanted to breed emotionless machines,” Connor says quietly. “They half succeeded.”

“How so?” Gavin asks. “With you? With the both of you? With him?”

Connor didn’t think of it that way, but Gavin is right on all counts. They half succeeded with Connor—the ability to shut everything off and just focus on the kill when he’s in the field. They half succeeded with the two of them—Niles is off being paid by whoever is the highest bidder for no other reason than it’s what he wants to do, and Connor is only with the ICA now because of his contract, because there’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. And they half succeeded with just Niles, because Connor has seen the small, tiny, rare moments where Niles lets himself watch the butterflies in the park and his guard is let down, just barely.

“Did he seem emotionless?” Connor asks, because those good moments  _ were  _ rare. They were exceptionally rare. Connor grew up with him, he has spent every day for the first twenty-seven years of their life together, and he can only count the moments were Niles felt like a person with a soul on one hand.

Gavin turns, looking up to the ceiling, “Sometimes. Sometimes you do, too. Like when you killed the guy at the butcher shop.”

_ Oh.  _ He should’ve known Gavin was watching, that he could tell.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

“You don’t have to apologize. I’m glad you did,” he looks over to Connor, sudden interest in his face. “You’re twins, right? You and him have different eyes.”

“He got a very expensive surgery. Contact lenses permanently fused with the eye. It’s dangerous,” Connor says, not taking on the words that felt like they were sharpened blades.  _ Why would I want to look like  _ ** _you, _ ** _ Connor? _ “Is this an interrogation night?”

“Is that okay?”

He nods, “Yeah. I’ve just never told anyone before.”

He never had to. The people that know were the people that were there when he was a kid or the people that saved him from that place, and he would prefer not to think of any of them. There are very few people he trusts, and they have all found out the truth in a way other than Connor divulging it to them.

“What if I ask you something that pisses you off?”

“Guess I’ll ditch you in this hotel room,” Connor replies, but he doesn’t think Gavin cares for the joke, because he looks away from his face again, and Connor wants to hold him there, make him look at him. It is so hard to get him to talk, that Connor has to guess his feelings and his thoughts through his expressions. Watching carefully and closely like a scientist trying to figure out how to keep a bomb from going off. “Gavin—”

“When was the first time you killed someone?”

He pauses. His body freezing into place, his hand moving away from Gavin’s, his body shifting back. “My first mission was when I was eighteen.”

“Did you succeed?”

“Y-Yes. Technically.”

“Technically?”

“Gavin, can we not talk about this?” he says. “Anything other than this?”

“We can do another even exchange,” Gavin says, turning back to face him. “I’ll tell you everything they did to me.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“No? You keep asking.”

“I just want you to talk to me.”

“Right,” Gavin says. “You don’t want the details about how they tied me up, then?”

“Gavin—”

“I’m sorry,” Gavin whispers, and he reaches out, a hand touching Connor’s chest, moving along the buttons of his shirt. “I’m not mad at you. I just don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why you care. Why you…  _ bother _ . Is it just because I knew Niles?”

“No,” Connor says. “I just like you. That’s all.”

“Oh?” Gavin laughs a little. “Falling in love with me, then?”

Connor smiles, but he doesn’t say anything. He can’t lie and he can’t tell the truth. “You should get some sleep, Gavin. You look tired.”

“Always taking care of me,” Gavin says. “You’re my guardian angel, huh?”

“Trying to be,” Connor replies, and Gavin smiles a little. Soft and sad and sweet. “I’ll sleep on the floor, okay?”

“Okay,” he says. “I might step on you in the middle of the night.”

“That’s fine. If I shared the bed with you, you’d probably steal the blankets.”

“I would,” Gavin says quietly, and the conversation trails off into silence as they get ready for bed. As Connor reluctant leaves the mattress and takes the floor, closing his eyes and pulling the spare blanket from the closet over his head to hide from the dim lights of the motel room. When he turns back, Gavin’s hand is stretched out across the empty space, staring at the gap where Connor used to be, and he wishes he could fill it again. That it wouldn’t make him feel guilty, that he wouldn’t be exploiting Gavin’s relationship with Niles, or Gavin’s trauma. That he could actually fit there properly.

He hopes someday he might. He hopes Gavin doesn’t run away when this is all over. He wants him to stay.

Connor is attached to him, and he can feel it happening. He could feel it happening since the moment he saw Gavin. And he just doesn’t care. There are very few people he trusts, and Gavin has become one of them.


	5. Implicit

**July 29th** | 10:05 A.M.

It is a quiet few weeks. There is no talk of who they want to go after next. The weeks just pass by, like neither of them want to bring to attention the fact that there is a person out there who should be on the chopping block next, but instead pretending like they are just two friends living together. Gavin isn’t like what Connor thought. He is angry and vicious when he is ready to attack—the fury blinding him. Connor always heard that phrase tossed around.  _ Blinded by anger.  _ He never saw it in action until he saw Gavin beating that man to death with a golf club. Continuing to hit him until there was nothing left.

It reminds him of the stab wounds. How many were inflicted upon someone that had likely died after the fifth or sixth one, considering where they were struck. But Gavin  _ kept _ stabbing him.

Connor wasn’t there for that. He is almost thankful. He grew up around murderers, trained to be once since he was an infant. Every bit of his environment tried its hardest to turn him into an unfeeling monster. A machine that would only care about how to put a gun together in the dark, how to turn any ordinary object into a weapon. But he has never seen someone kill like Gavin does.

Everyone else killed like they were taught.

Detached. Uncaring. Death was the only thing that mattered, and doing it quickly was better. Hiding a body or not getting caught was the priority. Not making someone suffer, not unless the job called for information to be taken from their target.

But it’s like the anger has drained Gavin of everything else. He sits quiet on the bed, the laptop open up in front of him. Typing away quietly. The click of the keys covered up only by the sound of music that plays. Not what he would expect Gavin to listen to, either.

Quiet.

Everything is so quiet.

  
  


**August 15th ** | 6:02 A.M.

“Can I come with you?” Gavin asks.

Connor is tying his shoelaces, getting ready to head out into the cold air of the morning, “Sure. Of course.”

  
  


**August 15th** | 6:17 A.M.

Gavin is fast. He is quicker than Connor had anticipated, but he is not as fast as Connor. He slows his pace so they don’t get too far apart. He glances over his shoulder every so often to make sure Gavin hasn’t disappeared somewhere in the path that winds around and through the park and he is always there, a few yards behind. He thinks Gavin is doing it on purpose. Staying that far back. Not running beside him. A separation that is necessary, a togetherness that feels like it is out of solidarity instead of running like twins side-by-side.

Connor used to run with Niles like that. They had to be as perfectly matched as possible in their personality and behaviors when they interacted with people, but Connor was always faster and Niles was always stronger.

  
  


**August 15th** | 6:39 A.M.

They stop at the corner they started, Gavin gasping for air, leaning against the railing that protects a bed of flowers from passerbys.

“Water?” Connor asks, holding the bottle out to him.

Gavin takes it, and he thinks there is a smile on his face when he twists the cap off and takes it.

“I see you,” Gavin says quietly, heaving out a breath.

“What?”

“You never heard of indirect kisses before?” he asks. “You really are falling in love with me, aren’t you?”

“You’re an idiot,” Connor replies, because his cheeks feel hot and he wants to run away. Back through the path, this time as fast as he can manage. Ditch Gavin just for the joke.

But there is this strange feeling inside of him.

This happiness that comes from being happy with someone. This happiness that is born out of crushes. Liking someone and liking to talk to them. Liking the feeling of butterflies and smiles. Liking that Gavin is actually smiling and Connor knows it’s real because Gavin doesn’t fake smile, not like Connor does to ease the tension.

“Give me that,” Connor says, taking it from his hand after Gavin drinks half of it in one gulp. “Bring your own next time.”

Gavin smiles and bites his lip, and Connor realizes what people mean when they say they hate crushes, too.

He had one before, when he was very young, and it makes him feel like a child, the way he reacts. But the moment passes quickly. The happiness still existing there, the laughter in the air, the faint smiles, but the joke is over. Gavin is leaning away from the fence, getting ready to head back. When he passes Connor, he hesitates for a moment by his side, close to him.

“Thanks,” he whispers. “For this.”

And then he is walking away while Connor is busy trying to get the bottle’s cap back on and into his bag and he chases after him, wishing that he could grasp Gavin’s hand and let him know that he is thankful, too.

  
  


**August 17th** | 7:19 P.M.

“Connor, come here. I need to show you something.”

He gets up from the couch, abandoning his books and his laptop for Gavin. He’s sitting at the kitchen counter, a small smile on his face. Out of place from what there usually is. Connor doesn’t see him behind the laptop this happy very often. It’s strange. For a hacker, Gavin quickly abandoned the comfort of his old work. Connor isn’t going to blame him. It’s just surprising sometimes to see him using it, and it is even more surprising to see him smile.

“What is it?”

Gavin turns the computer toward him, pressing play. A video starts. Music filtering out through the speakers. Electronic rock, he would guess. There is an underlying tone of anger in it, even if the words aren’t necessarily capturing all of that. It’s like the singer has too much inside of him for it not to touch every word.

Which isn’t a surprise, since it’s Gavin. Teenage Gavin and a girl, singing a song together. Connor recognizes one of the other people in the band as Elijah. Young—an extremely young version—but he still makes the connection once he recognizes Gavin. Connor has seen pictures of their family in the file that Hank sent them, and he’s seen pictures of Elijah and Gavin at this age with the girl and the boy in Gavin’s old apartment. It’s Gavin’s band. He’s mentioned it once or twice, never talked about it. It is strange to see him so…  _ alive _ .

But here they are, producing a music video clearly shot by teenagers in high school during their free time. But it’s still good. The use of lighting, the quality, the editing.

“It has ten thousand views,” Gavin says quietly. “We would’ve felt like famous chumps in high school if we knew that. But I got locked out of the account. I forgot the password. Or my brother changed it.”

“Should’ve learned to hack this website first.”

Gavin laughs, “Yeah. I guess so. But I like it being… untouched now. It’s… pure, I guess.”

Pure, untouched by the things the men did to him. One last fragment of his youth he can keep saved away. Locked behind a password and a username.

“You have a tattoo?” Connor asks, looking away from the screen. Gavin always wears long sleeves now. Keeps as much of himself covered as possible. But before, as a youth, he wore short sleeves. Showing off the rose tattoo on his forearm.

“Yeah,” Gavin says, and he draws up the sleeve. The tattoo is more faded now. Not weeks-old, but years and years old. Faded red and green ink. But a rose carefully constructed, surrounded by scars.

“It’s beautiful,” Connor says quietly, watching Gavin pull his sleeve down, hiding the evidence. Burn marks from cigarettes, slashes from knives. Scars from all types of things that Connor wishes he didn’t know have the knowledge of what could’ve caused them.

“Chris drew it. We all have them,” he replies.  _ “Like Roses.  _ Thorns and all.”

“I like it,” he says, leaning toward Gavin like this is a secret. “The band. You sound good.”

“You can be our number one fan,” he says. “I’m sure the spot is easy to fill.”

“Then I’ll fill it.”

  
  


**August 24th ** | 1:35 P.M.

It doesn’t last long.

A month and a half and Gavin is sitting at the laptop, scrolling through pictures of criminal associates of Eddie’s. It takes him a long time to sift through each one. It isn’t just that Eddie’s gang was big. It wasn’t. It wasn’t enough to take over the city, but its reach was wide and the list is long. He was the type to be hired by everyone and anyone to get a job done. And it is difficult to look at the pictures of all these people in the database. It’s difficult to prepare himself for seeing any number of faces, and it is terrifying to wonder if the people were never arrested once and never placed on this list to begin with. And every so often he will see someone that looks too close to someone that Gavin saw in that basement or pass by someone that is already dead or just has his thoughts wander a little too much into the past—

But there.

_ Him. _

  
  


**August 25th** | 3:56 A.M.

_ He was a watcher. A voyeur. But there. An actor. A player. A participant. Implicit in the action every single time. _

It is all Gavin can manage to write before he has to stop. He doesn’t want to spill the details of what happened to him to the pages, even if that was the point of the journal. He wants to spill his feelings, his thoughts and emotions. Get out how he feels in poetic metaphors that will comfort him before they wash away like the storm he relates them to. And he wishes that it would. He wishes that the rain would cleanse him. He wishes he could wake up in the morning without feeling like he is drowning. He wishes that he could get this over with easier. That it wouldn’t be so difficult to pick out the faces on the screen and have to learn their names or see glimpses of their life.

Gavin shoves them away but it always comes back like it is chasing him and he is trying his hardest but he is never fast enough, never strong enough, to get away.

Even that, he thinks, seems to exist in the aftermath. The perpetual feeling of not being good enough residing even now. If he was better, he might’ve fought more to get away. If he was better, he might not have been kidnapped in the first place. If he was better, Niles never would’ve left him. If he was better, he never would’ve gotten into hacking but him and his brother and his friends would’ve had their stupid fucking band and they would be playing at stupid fucking clubs right now screaming their lungs out during angry songs that came from normal things instead of the reality of what he faces now.

He just wishes he were stronger and that he could survive this like everyone has told him he already has.

But they are wrong.

If he survived, he wouldn’t be spending months at a time waiting in Connor’s apartment trying to piece himself back together again so that when this is over, he will be able to survive on his own and he won’t need his savior to keep him held together anymore. If he was stronger, he wouldn’t break the moment he saw a face that bore the smallest resemblance to someone that slapped him around or shoved pills into his mouth.

If he was stronger, he would not be crying right now, too consumed by the tears to continue writing. If he was stronger, he wouldn’t be suffocating the noises of them and he would let the sobs wake Connor up because if he was stronger, he would be able to handle the kindness of Connor’s existence, the arms that would wrap around him, that would keep him from continuing to shatter more and more every second he thinks about how worthless he has become.

And then Connor is there, beside him, sitting on the floor next to the bed, a hand taking Gavin’s. Not the kind of comfort Gavin really wanted. Not the all encompassing feeling, but still there, still holding onto him.

_ Here.  _ Connor is  _ here. _

  
  


**August 28th ** | 4:21 P.M.

Gavin doesn’t tell Connor about him yet. He wants to put it off a few more days, at least. He wants to laugh about Connor’s inability to cook. He wants to tease Connor about the way he backs away when dumping pasta into water and screams like a kid when the water splashes against his arms. He wants to stand too close to him and think about things he can’t have.

He is sitting on the couch, watching Connor study a recipe that Gavin’s pulled up to try when he thinks about how he used to be good at this.

Not romance. He wasn’t ever good at romance. He was awful at it. But he was good at starting with sex. At making someone want him for that. He was good at it with the others, too. It was the only reason they kept him around. He was good at it even when he was begging them to stop.

And he thinks about how easy it would be to offer himself up to Connor and how much he wants to do it. How he wants to carve himself out again and leave nothing behind but someone that can show their gratitude through blowjobs and late night fucks.

But he also, sitting here on the couch, thinks about how much he doesn’t want Connor to be another person in the long list of people that hasn’t cared about him enough to see past that. He thinks about how he wants to lean forward and trace the slope of Connor’s nose and press his face against the soft skin of his neck and close his eyes and be able to rest there for a few moments.

He knows what he wants but he also knows what he’s good at and the two things are conflicting and fighting inside of him, so he ends up doing nothing at all but thinking about what he wants in the end.

And what he wants is to be able to pour all of this out from inside of him, so he tries. He tries to get the words on the page about how even if he could give in to having Connor in the most degrading of manners, he wouldn’t want it, because he is terrified.

He is so fucking terrified that if someone touches him, he will think about all the other touches on his body. He is scared that when someone kisses him next time, it will taste like poison memories that will rot him from the inside out. He is terrified that he will never be allowed to have any fragment of happiness with anyone for the rest of his life.

And he realizes that’s the real reason he doesn’t want this life anymore—

He doesn’t think there’s any life left to live. It has all been destroyed already. It doesn’t matter how hard he tries for something else, he doesn’t ever truly believe he will get it.

He will be alone for the rest of his time. Why not cut it short now?

  
  


**August 28th ** | 4:23 P.M.

“Gavin?”

He looks up, meets Connor’s gaze. There are tears in his eyes, his teeth closed over his bottom lip like he is trying his hardest not to cry, but Connor has heard him sniffling for the past ten minutes. He has seen tears leave tracks down his cheeks and drop against the page. He cries a lot, and Connor isn’t going to judge him for that. He just wishes he could help more. But he is scared of pushing Gavin. He’s scared of pushing him until he breaks or pushing him away, when Connor really just wants him to be here, to stay, to be okay.

“I’m fine,” he whispers.

Connor hesitates for a moment, watching him. There isn’t a question in his mind of whether or not he should try to comfort Gavin. He wants to, he thinks he should. He wants to hold onto him and let him know that it will be okay. Connor will do everything he can to make sure Gavin is okay.

But he knows Gavin and he knows he won’t talk about it, and interrupting the stream of scribbles on those pages might do more harm than good, because at least the words are getting out. At least it is going somewhere other than stuck inside of him. But then Connor sees the wobble of Gavin’s chin as he looks away, as the tears start slipping down his cheeks at a steady rate and Connor leaves the table to come to his side.

The journal is set aside, closed with the pen making the spot. Connor gathers Gavin in his arms, pulling him close, holding onto him as tight as possible. He has never done this before, but he tries his best, and Gavin’s cries aren’t quiet anymore. They are loud and gasping, muffled only because Gavin’s face is pressed against his shoulder. And he doesn’t know how to tell Gavin it will be okay, because he has been in a situation like this before and no amount of someone telling him it’s going to be okay is going to help. It doesn’t feel like it ever will be, here, now.

So instead he repeats, quiet and hushed tones, that he is here. Here for Gavin, always.

Forever, he is starting to think.

Always and forever.

  
  


**August 28th ** | 4:26 P.M.

He is starting to hate this. How much Connor makes him feel safe.

Moments like these where Connor proves him wrong immediately after the fact. That he can hold and touch Gavin like this and it doesn’t make him want to pull away and scrub his skin raw and light himself on fire. These moments where Connor holds him and whispers to him, hands rubbing comforting circles on his back, another brushing softly through his hair—

They teach him that he is wrong when he writes about how impossible it is to love again. He knows he can love again, but he also knows he is too broken for Connor, and it just makes him wish he could be a better person for him, in every sense of the word, for him, because he can’t do it for himself. There’s no point in doing anything for himself.

  
  


**August 28th ** | 5:13 P.M.

All good things must come to an end.

But Gavin is reluctant to let Connor go, and the only reason they part is because of the timer on the oven ringing. Gavin wonders if there wasn’t food being prepared, how long they could’ve stayed like that. Gavin stopped crying ten minutes ago and all he wanted was to let his eyes slip closed and fall asleep. He wanted to remember what it was like to rest his head against someone and feel okay about dreaming.

He wonders if he fell asleep like that, if Connor would have chased the dreams away.

But he doesn’t get a chance to find out. He gets up, he leads Connor to the kitchen. He explains the next part of the meal as if nothing had ever happened.

  
  


**August 28th ** | 6:25 P.M.

“Gavin…” he struggles with his words. He has struggled with them for the last month. Trying to figure out a way to say this without Gavin getting angry with him or defensive. “I know you talk to North sometimes, and you write in your journal, but—”

“You want me to go to therapy?” Gavin asks, finishing the sentence for him. Making it easier than he thought it would.

“I think you should consider it.”

“I’ve considered it, Connor,” he says. “I just don’t think it’s worth it.”

“You don’t think it’s worth it?”

“No,” Gavin replies. “I already know how this ends. You can’t change it.”

  
  


**August 28th ** | 10:10 P.M.

Night comes slowly. It descends upon them like the sun is refusing to set. Gavin doesn’t mind the night. He likes the darkness, sometimes. It reminds him that time is passing. In the basement, he had no windows. He had no clock. He had no way of knowing how long he was trapped there. When he got out and he first looked in the mirror at the hospital, he was almost scared to see how much he aged. And he had. Like it had truly been six years instead of six months. All of it weighing down on him. The moment he looked in the mirror was the moment he realized he had truly forgotten what he looked like before.

Tonight he lays down, pulling the blankets around him, relishing in the warmth and the comfort of layers.

“Connor?” he says quietly, saying the name into the dark without meaning to.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

_ Everything _ , he thinks. For making him help cover up the murder at his apartment. For killing the second man. For making him come with him and help in this endeavor to kill the third and in a few days, the fourth. For taking over his bed and his place and making Connor deal with this sad broken boy he has become.

He settles on something else instead:

“For asking you about before, last month,” he says. “About how you became a hitman.”

“Oh,” Connor sighs, and Gavin can hear him shifting on the couch. “It’s fine.”

“No,” Gavin whispers. “It’s not. You didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Gavin—”

“It’s like me,” he continues. “It’s hard to talk about and I don’t want to. You don’t want to talk about it, do you?”

Connor is quiet for a long moment, the silence almost petrifying.

“Not in the same sense as you,” he replies.

Gavin sits up, looking toward the couch. He can’t see Connor from over here, but he is watching the space where he knows he is, “What do you mean?”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Connor replies. “Not anymore.”

_ Oh. _

“It’s more like… I don’t want you to know,” Connor’s voice is growing quieter and quieter. “I don’t want you to… look at me differently.”

“Why would I do that?”

Connor moves slowly, carefully. Sitting up and looking toward Gavin. He seems almost surprised that Gavin is sitting up, too, preparing for this late-night talk of theirs like they’re at a slumber party. Like the secrets they share are something as silly as crushes and gossip instead of murder and torture.

“A lot of bad things happened. I did… I was…” he trails off, looking to his hands. “The first time they made us hurt people, we were barely twelve years old. We were kids, but we didn’t… we didn’t do anything to stop it.”

“How many?” Gavin asks.

“How many?” Connor repeats, confused.

“How many were there?” he says, leaning forward. “Was it just you and Niles—?”

“No,” Connor whispers. “There were twelve of us and we didn’t all make it. Gavin… can we… stop?”

He nods, leaning away, pulling the blanket around him again. He is doing it like he did it before. Pressing despite knowing he shouldn’t. Asking more even though he just apologized for bringing it up.

“I won’t look at you different,” he says quietly, hiding away. “You were a kid. They did this. Not you. I know who you are now. It doesn’t matter who you were when they hurt you.”

“You know it’s the same for you?” Connor says back, and his voice is quiet, too, but it sounds deafening. “Whatever they did, it doesn’t make you less than, either. I’m not going to look at you differently.”

He nods, for the sake of Connor if he is looking. An agreement he doesn’t believe in, but something that feels nice, too. Like one bulb on a string of Christmas lights lighting up. Twinkling on dim and dark before going out again. He knows it’s not true. They aren’t the same. It’s hard to pretend they are. Their traumas aren’t similar enough to close this gap between them. It’s not enough for the wound inside of Gavin to feel like it has a chance of closing.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 2:01 P.M.

He lives close by in the city. When Connor only ends up driving for ten minutes, it makes Gavin feel sick to his stomach with how close he’s been this entire time. Not even five miles. They could’ve crossed paths, if Gavin had left the apartment for anything but this. He could’ve been the one to follow Gavin to his apartment.

They walk up to the apartment together after he leaves. Stepping from the seemingly safe street into the seemingly safe building.

And Gavin has to wonder—

Is he the only one? Is it just him? How many other people have they hurt? Have they hurt other people?

It isn’t the first time he’s thought about it. Of course not. He thought about it last time, too. He’ll think about it every time. But he has to wonder if he is alone in this. Not just being hurt by this individual person, but being the only one in that basement. Have there been other people they kidnapped off the street? Are there other people who participate but decided not to when they saw Gavin’s face? Do they usually kidnap women and have a different set of people to rape and torture? Were they aware of the last one’s liking of children? Did they care? Why would they?

A thousand questions that Gavin knows he’ll never get the answer too, a thousand questions he is starting to believe he doesn’t care if he gets the answer to. Not in the sense that he doesn’t care about if there are others, just that it doesn’t change anything in killing them. But then he wonders if by killing these people, if a dozen other victims aren’t getting the justice they deserve. If they can rest easily, wherever they are, just knowing they’re dead or if they wanted them behind bars.

Gavin doesn’t think he ever would have taken the stand and testified. He would never want anyone to know what happened to him. He wouldn’t want to say those words out loud to a room full of people. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone else who is stronger and better to do it, who wants to do it, who’s anger fuels them in the direction of justice instead of revenge.

“Gavin?”

He glances over to Connor, his hand is stretched out towards him, held out like a promise. Gavin takes it without even thinking, grasping Connor’s hand tightly in his. He is afraid that he is holding it too tightly, that he will break Connor’s fingers, but Connor just squeezes back and gives a reassuring nod and Gavin is constantly and always struck by how kind he is.

It’s so stupid to think about, but he is stuck on how Connor is a hitman, how he is the opposite of Niles until he gets a weapon in his hand and switches over. Connor is two people, keeping his killing separate from himself. Niles didn’t do that. The person he was when he killed bled over into his personality and rid him of everything decent there was. Gavin doesn’t know if Niles would have helped him with this if he found out. He tries not to think about it, because the part of him that saw something in Niles to love believes he would and the part that is angry and bitter with Niles and knows the reality of their relationship says he wouldn’t.

And why does he care?

Connor is here. Connor is holding his hand. Connor is helping him. Connor is, piece by piece, memory by memory, shoving Niles out of his heart and into a memory sitting in the back of his head, distant and foggy.

“This is his apartment,” Connor says quietly, breaking their hands apart and kneeling down. He starts to pick the lock while Gavin leans awkwardly against the wall to cover up the act in case someone walks by.

They made a plan at home—

At  _ Connor’s place— _

They’ll go in, hide, wait in the shadows for the man to come back. It will be like it was last time. A sedative drug injected into his neck, tie him up, kill him, leave.

They have to be more careful here, though. The walls in this apartment are like the walls in Gavin’s first apartment. Thin, like nothing is between them. They’ll be heard if the man screams or struggles. They have to hope he comes back before school gets out, before the apartment is flooded with children and parents. The preservation of their childhood has to be done with as much care as possible. Gavin understands the importance of that. Everything they did to him rewrote something inside of him and turned it black and viscous and he’s an adult already. He doesn’t know what would happen to a kid if they overheard torture or murder. Killing him might not save Gavin’s soul, but at least it will prevent him from participating in the destruction of another.

The door swings open, Connor stands and he does not take Gavin’s hand again. They step inside, quiet and careful as they close the door behind them.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 2:07 P.M.

There’s a sound inside of the apartment. Distant and quiet. Connor watches Gavin’s face shift as he steps toward it. He tries to reach out to him, to get him to stop, but Gavin is walking too fast. Fear drawing over his features so fast and so sharp that it takes Connor a moment to catch on when he bolts forward into the main room.

It’s lined with televisions. Every wall, every surface. Old models, new models. Playing different videos but with all the same content.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 2:09 P.M.

Gavin called him the Watcher before he knew his name.

Jefferson wasn’t like the others. He didn’t act. He just watched, a camera in one hand and his dick in the other. He was a participant, even if he was never one of the ones to shove his way inside of Gavin. He was always there, videotaping every movement. And it became one of his biggest fears.

That his videos were out there, online, for everyone to see. That people were getting off on it thinking it was roleplay or even knowing it was real. It didn’t matter. Jefferson jacking off while Gavin screamed for help was bad enough, but he had nightmares of people looking at him when he was on the street, knowing that he was the pornstar of their favorite video series.

And here it is.

Playing again.

The times they took turns with him and the times they made him play a part and the times they just wanted him to be as hurt and bleeding as possible. And the sound—

The only one with sound is the one with Eddie and it gets underneath his skin, digging further and further and he can hear himself echoing the same  _ no  _ and the same  _ please  _ and he can feel the same tears falling down his cheeks and he’s lost his anger. It’s gone and it’s been replaced by an unknowable grief that makes his legs weak and he feels to his knees, trying to hold himself together.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 2:10 P.M.

“Gavin?” Connor whispers, stepping forward. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s stuck. Frozen. “Gavin, he knew we were coming.”

He had to have.

This set up is not the set up of a monster enjoying his work. It’s the set up built to destroy someone.

He turns away from Gavin, his hand coming to his belt, pulling the gun out and aiming it at the door as it opens.

Connor was stupid before. He was so stupid. He thought when the man got away from the building that he would warn Eddie and it would make it impossible to find him again. He should’ve known everything that him and Gavin are doing is warning everyone else in that room. They might not be in contact after, but they’d still know. They would still be able to figure out that someone is methodically picking them off one by one.

“Put the gun down,” Jefferson says, the door closing behind him. He has a gun in his hand, pointed at Connor. Not a sleek silenced pistol. Something loud. Something that will surely draw the attention of everyone here in this building. And if people hear a gunshot, if they look out a window and see Gavin or Connor running, they will link them to the crime.

This apartment doesn’t have cameras. The street doesn’t either. Connor already checked the buildings and shops on either side. They only had to worry about eyewitnesses here. He’s made sure of that the entire time.

“Turn the screens off,” Connor replies.

“Why?” he asks, looking toward Gavin. “I like him like that.”

He wants to shoot him. He could take him out. He should. One press of the trigger and he would be down. He is faster than Jefferson, he knows that. Being trained for thirty-odd years has that effect. He knew how to take a gun apart and put it back together in the dark before he was ten. He was hitting bullseyes blindfolded when he was fifteen.

Connor could take him out. Connor could kill him.

But he hesitates and he keeps hesitating because this is supposed to be Gavin’s job. This is supposed to be for him. This is Gavin’s revenge, not his.

“Put the gun down,” Jefferson says again. “We can talk this out.”

They can’t.

Monsters don’t compromise. There is no point in trying.

“Come on,” he says. “I’ll let you two go if you promise not to come back.”

Like Jefferson is the one with all the power here.

“What do you mean?”

“I won’t leak any videos, and that’s all you have against me. It’s not like I did anything wrong.”

_ Not like he did anything wrong. _

“You’re wrong,” Connor says. He is so clearly wrong.

“Fine,” Jefferson says, and his gun turns towards Gavin. “Maybe you’ll be cooperative if it’s  _ his  _ life on the line.”

And Connor’s split-second decision is made. This is Gavin’s revenge, but Connor isn’t going to let anything else happen to him. He isn’t going to let Gavin be threatened again by a person like Jefferson.

Monsters don’t compromise. Monsters threaten lives.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 2:13 P.M.

It isn’t the quiet sound of the bullet, it isn’t the thud of the body, but it’s the silence that settles in after. It’s the hand on his shoulder, the one on his chin, tipping his face up.

“Gavin? He’s dead. I turned the screens off. Gavin?”

He is still crying. He can’t seem to make himself stop. He thought he was so strong and so tough before all of this. Before the video and before the basement and before Niles. He barely ever cried. He was the toughest person in the world. He wore leather jackets and drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes under the bleachers with his best friends, and now he can’t stop crying. He just wants to stop fucking crying for two fucking seconds.

But he commends Connor’s effort to brush them away when there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Gavin whispers. “I didn’t want you to f-find out or to s-see.”

“I know.”

He feels sick and broken and exposed all over again. Connor doesn’t just know now what they did to him, if he hadn’t already known before, there was no denying it now. Connor saw the videos. He watched them do it. He heard Gavin’s voice crying for help.

“I didn’t—”

“I know, Gavin, it’s okay,” Connor whispers. “Do you remember what you said to me? Whatever they did to you, it doesn’t make you worthless.”

But it doesn’t feel that way. Right now he doesn’t feel like he is worth anything. Right now he feels used all over again and he feels like garbage. One step forward and two steps back.

“Can you get me away from here?” he whispers.

Connor nods, helping him stand. Gavin barely glances at the blank screens, he barely glances at the dead body of Jefferson on the floor. One bullet between his eyes, when he deserved to have them dug out with knives and forced down his throat. He deserved to be skinned alive and set on fire. He deserved to feel the same way Gavin feels now.

But the fight in Gavin is gone and Jefferson is already dead. There is no point in lingering here any longer. He just wants to go home.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 3:41 P.M.

“North?” he asks quietly.

“Need my help again?”

“Yeah,” Connor whispers. “Is it something… do you think…”

“I can handle it, Con, I promise.”

“And you’ll get out if you can’t?”

“You have my word.”

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 3:43 P.M.

Connor needs the tapes gone. He doesn’t want them going into evidence when the body is inevitably discovered, and he doesn’t tell North to bother dealing with the body at all. He needs her focus on the tapes. He doesn’t want to risk anyone else seeing them. He knows North will destroy them. He can trust her.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 7:27 P.M.

He sits on the edge of the bed, numbly staring at the wall. Exposed brick, rough and uncontained. It’s still daylight. The sun won’t set anytime soon, but he doesn’t want to be awake anymore. He’s just not tired enough to go to sleep. He can’t seem to get himself to move, either. He is just stuck like this, watching the wall.

And he is afraid to sleep, anyway. He already has the images flashing in his mind now, he doesn’t want to the surreal nature of a dream to make them even more inescapable.

He must’ve been a terrible person in a past life to have this happen to him. He doesn’t think, even if he adds up all the bad things, that he has ever deserved  _ this. _

But maybe he did.

Maybe he was wrong.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 10:35 P.M.

He sits there for an hour, two hours, three hours watching the wall before he finally moves. Picking up his laptop and waiting for it to boot up. A hundred words sitting in his head. There was an online chatroom that North gave him the link to. There are Tina’s emails waiting unanswered. He thinks he can put it into words. He is slowly convincing himself he is able to type out what happened to him and allow another human to read it.

But then he thinks about how ridiculous it sounds. How he will appear like a teenager making it up for attention, and when the laptop finishes booting up, he closes it again and sets it aside. A new fear of not being believed sitting inside of his chest.

It was different with North and Connor. They saw. They knew.

But a stranger? And Tina?

Tina would think of it as an elaborate excuse for why he hasn’t talked to her in so long. A stranger would think he was doing it for laughs.

So he hides away under the blanket, closing his eyes and letting the dim light of the setting sun wrap around him under the safety of the covers and he lets himself cry, quietly, silently, in the coming dark.

Because he feels like a child, when he would scream for his mom when he fell down and skinned his knee at the playground, but this time he can feel himself crying for Eli. Wishing he had the only remainder of his family here to tell him that the unconditional love still exists, that Elijah will always be here for him. He wants to scream about how much he wants his brother but he can’t because even Eli left, and that was Gavin’s fault, too. And there’s no going back. He’s alone and he’s so alone it feels like a sinking weight in his chest and he feels cruel for thinking that Connor isn’t enough right now, because it’s not even true. It’s not that Connor isn’t enough. It’s that he’s too much, it’s that it makes Gavin feel like  _ he  _ isn’t enough, and it’s just the fact that Connor isn’t the one he wants right now. He wants his brother. He wants to go back to playground fights and late nights whispering about band names and getting matching rose tattoos. He wants his life back. He wants himself back and it’s gone.

And he doesn’t know how to get it back again, and he doesn’t know if it’s worth trying to get it back anymore. But he wants his brother and he wants his mom and he wants to pretend that he has his whole life ahead of him instead of already destroyed and lingering behind him. There is no going back. There is only pretending that there is a future, there is only trying to move forward.

  
  


**September 2nd ** | 11:01 P.M.

He hears the sound of Gavin’s footsteps first, and when he lifts his head up, Gavin is at the edge of the couch, his eyes looking somewhere else, tear-streaked cheeks and his teeth closed over his bottom lip.

“I didn’t want you to know,” he says quietly, echoing his words from before. “But you already did, didn’t you?”

Connor nods as he sits up, opening his arms for a space that Gavin can fill, and he does. Climbing onto the couch and resting his head against Connor’s chest, fingers twisting into the fabric of his shirt. He isn’t crying anymore. It’s subdued just barely, but Gavin still hides his face like he has done every time Connor has hugged him.

“It’s okay,” Connor whispers, even though it’s not. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”


	6. Sacredly (part one)

**September 3rd** | 6:25 A.M.

The sun hasn’t quite risen yet. It’s trying, in the distance, on the other side of the buildings. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. He doesn’t remember feeling Connor leave the couch. He doesn’t know how he managed to do it without waking him. But Gavin takes the blanket with him, wrapping up against the cold, tiptoeing across the space toward where Connor sits by the window, watching the sunrise.

“You’re not running?” Gavin asks quietly, sitting beside him in the small space.

He feels wrong, sometimes, for how easy it is to be close to another person. How he can let someone like Connor touch him or hold him. Gavin thinks maybe it’s just him, because if he goes out on a walk or to a cafe, he’ll do his best to avoid letting another stranger get close to him. Is it trust that lets him be this close to Connor? Because he knows Connor would never hurt him that way, not in a million years? Not in a billion different lifetimes and universes?

“It was raining,” Connor replies. “And I thought… if I go out, if I slip and fall and die, what would happen? You wouldn’t be able to make fun of my cooking anymore.”

“That’s exactly what I’d miss the most, too,” Gavin says. He reaches out for him, his hand touching the edge of Connor’s arm. Cold from the closeness to the glass. The morning not quite containing the same suffocating heat the day does. “Is that all?”

“Hm?”

“That wasn’t it, was it?”

“No,” Connor says. “No. I was thinking about you. About what you said.”

“What did I say?”

“You said you didn’t want therapy because you know how your story ends. How do you think your story ends, Gavin?”

With him dead in a ditch. With him hanging from the ceiling. With him in a bathtub and a hairdryer electrifying the water. With him on his bed, laying like he’s peaceful and asleep and an empty pill bottle in his hand. Any number of ways, except maybe jumping from a roof or a bridge. It sounds too scary. Sleeping sounds the best. He thinks he would like to go out like it was a dream.

“I don’t think I’m as much of a survivor as you said I was.”

“Gavin—”

“I don’t want to survive, Connor,” he says quietly. “I keep trying to pretend that I do, and I just don’t. And it’s getting too hard to pretend. And I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

“We have to.”

“Not now, though, do we?”

“Only if you promise me you won’t do anything,” Connor whispers. “I don’t want your story to end like that.”

He doesn’t know if he can do that. It is already so difficult. But Gavin nods, reaching a hand out, hooking his pinkie around Connor’s. A promise.

“Is that all you’re thinking about?”

“No,” he says. “There’s… my brother.”

“Niles.”

Connor is quiet for a long moment, looking out at the rain puddles on the ground below. If Gavin follows his gaze, he can make out the tiny pinpricks of ripples in the puddles. He hadn’t noticed it was still raining. Just barely. Sprinkling, like it’s trying it’s best to get every last drop out of the clouds.

What a shame.

Gavin loves the rain, and he missed it. Seems to be happening with his entire life, though. He can’t even say _ lately _anymore. It’s been months. He hadn’t even realized how the time was passing. Every day he complains to himself that it’s too slow, and suddenly he’s here, in September, watching Connor watch the rain.

“I had another brother,” Connor says quietly. “Me and Niles weren’t twins. We were triplets.”

There’s this—

_ Weird _feeling in him.

Like betrayal.

Not because of what Connor said, but this just—this _ reminder _that Niles never told him. Never spoke to him. Never would say anything. Would keep everything bottled up, would never even seem to let it bother him. Gavin tried his hardest to pry his way inside and it didn’t seem to matter. Their relationship was a one-way street. Niles more than just a private person, he was closed off, he was locked up.

It doesn’t matter. Gavin tells himself that a hundred times. And it’s true. It doesn’t matter in the way that it had before, when it would make him sad and upset and wish that he was good enough to be worth at least a listening ear. Someone that might not fix it but might _ help _. But he was never even worth that. It didn’t matter how many stories of his own past Gavin divulged, he would never get anything in return. And he knows it’s selfish. He knows everything about this moment is selfish. Feeling like he is entitled to stories about a past that he has learned now aren’t stories that want to be told. Taking Connor’s words and pasting them inside of himself, making him feel a sliver of the hurt.

It makes him angry, and it makes him mad, and it makes him realize that even if there might always be moments like this, where he feels something again, something that pisses him off or something that makes him miss Niles, he doesn’t feel anything else toward him. It’s gone. It’s slipped away. The boy he tried chasing for a year isn’t here anymore. There’s no point in trying anymore.

But he thinks about how he has known Connor for less than that, and how he already knows him a hundred times more than he ever knew Niles.

Why does he find it such a surprise, then, that he moves a little closer, that his fingers that have been tracing gentle shapes against Connor’s palm and moves to take his hand? And that he realizes, when Connor admits this tiny little thing, this enormous secret, this fact that changes his entire world, that Gavin is glad it’s _ Connor _telling him? That it means more if it’s from someone who looks at him the way Connor does?

“Tell me about him.”

  
  


**September 3rd** | 6:27 A.M.

It is not really a question, that comes from Gavin, it’s a statement or an order. Connor knows he could get out of it if he wanted to. He doesn’t have to tell him anything.

But he does.

He tells him everything.

Connor tells Gavin about how he was a baby and him and his brothers were kidnapped for an experiment. Not taken legally. He says this, even though he doesn’t know if it’s actually true. He just assumes it. He just prefers it. He prefers his parents not giving him away to become a murderer willingly, even if it means there are two people out in the world crushed by the loss of their three missing baby boys. It means there is a link in his life, somewhere, somehow, waiting for him to come home.

Connor tells Gavin about the house he grew up in. This old thing in the middle of nowhere. A dirt road that stretched on for miles, a forest that went on equally as far. The stairs creaked under his steps, no matter how hard he tried to be quiet, no matter how hard he tried to learn the spots that wouldn’t announce his arrival or departure. He watched Simon go up and down those stairs like a ghost, so quiet that it was like he was levitating above the wood.

Connor tells Gavin about his bedroom, which was cramped from the furniture. Three beds shoved into a room, barely any space between them. Connor had the one against the wall with the window, and he’d stay up and he’d watch the forest outside, waiting for a sign of life. He tells him about how Niles was on the opposite side of the room, how their brother was in the middle. He never knew their exact ages. He never knew which one of them was two minutes older or five minutes younger. It was just decided that it was this: Niles was the oldest because he was the cruelest. Connor was the youngest because he was the weakest. And their brother was placed firmly in the middle, never seeming to lie on one side or the other until he would prove in the most bizarre moment which.

  
  


**September 3rd** | 6:31 A.M.

“What was his name?”

Connor shrugs, “He didn’t have one. None of us did.”

“But you—”

“Me and Niles chose our names when all of us were eight years old. We wanted something for ourselves. I chose Connor, because it was in a book I liked to read. And Niles chose his because it sounded like his number.”

“His number?” Gavin asks, but he knows, he remembers. He remembers the people asking him where _ Nines _ was. Not Niles. _ Nines. _He never questioned it. He knew who they were asking about. That was enough.

“There were twelve of us,” Connor says quietly. “They referred to us as that. Seven, Eight, Nine. I was Eight.”

“So… Seven?”

“He didn’t want to pick himself a name. He wanted to get out. He wanted to go home. He wanted his parents to tell him what they were going to name him.”

“Connor?”

  
  


**September 3rd **| 6:33 A.M.

He didn’t make it out alive. A lot of them didn’t. But Seven was different. He always surprised Connor. He found a quarter when they had their free time outside, and he pressed it into Connor’s hand and told him it would keep him safe. It was stupid, and it was childish, but Connor had never seen money before. He didn’t even know what it was, except from the context clues from the books on his shelves, the books they weren’t supposed to read. They didn’t exist on the shelf to fill their time, they existed on the shelf to see which one of them would give in to the temptation and break the rules they set, and it was always Connor and Markus and Simon, running away with a copy of something into the woods and hiding it in the trunk of a half-dead tree.

Markus was the one to spend days trying to drill a hole into it so it could rest on a chain around his neck and hope they didn’t see it. It didn’t work. There are dents and scrapes, but they were never trusted with tools that could’ve done the job. Not at twelve years old. So Connor kept it hidden, slotted between the floorboards, underneath a pair of shoes he didn’t wear. It was safer there, anyway.

They weren’t often left alone in the house. People came and went. Different teachers, a woman that watched their every move. There wasn’t any technology, save for the lights and the phones they wouldn’t let the kids touch. They were like magical things. Everything seemed so magical to Connor when he was a kid. The world seemed like a futuristic place. He had never been outside of the house, except in the woods or the backyard. They would go hunting to prove they could kill a creature like a deer or a rabbit. One step further up the chain to kill a human.

But they were kids.

And they weren’t any good at it, but they could be trained to be.

Except for Connor.

He could shoot a deer if he wanted to. He had the aim. He had the practice. A pistol in his hands since he was young enough to remember what it meant and how to use it. But he didn’t want to kill.

He never wanted to kill.

Seven always tried to help. Killing a few extra, crediting them to Connor to cover it up. It was his way of keeping Connor safe, but it didn’t work.

They knew. They found out. They took it out on him.

Their first lesson in torture happened because of Connor. Not just the art of it, but being able to hold up against it. They were kids, and they had knives put in their hands and they were told to cut until Connor or Seven admitted to what they’d done.

He watched them kill Seven. Slowly. Little by little. He watched until they asked Nines to finish it off. Not to kill Seven. He wasn’t supposed to _ kill _Seven. They were going to make Connor do that, to prove that he could. But Nines was there, not his brother anymore but the killing machine they were training him to be, and he cut a little too deeply.

Everyone thought it was an accident. Nines wouldn’t purposefully kill his own brother. Not when he was a twelve-year-old, crying and screaming. Not when Connor was bound to the other chair, meant to watch this all play out.

_ Look at what you caused. Look at what you did. _

Connor doesn’t know how to tell Gavin this. He doesn’t know how to put it into words. He doesn’t want to ruin whatever relationship Gavin had with Niles, and he doesn’t want to ruin whatever relationship they have together. But he says it anyway.

Down to the point, later that night, when Connor laid in bed, weeping in the quiet, watching the moonlight illuminate the empty bed between them, and Niles told him he did it to save Connor.

_ Keep it, _ he said in the dark. _ Keep whatever soul you have left. _

  
  


**September 3rd** | 6:37 A.M.

“How did you get away from there?” Gavin asks, because he doesn’t want to think about the story.

He doesn’t want to think about how Niles killed his brother with the same hands that touched him. He doesn’t want to think about how Connor was a child, forced to watch his brother do the same things that people had done to Gavin.

He doesn’t want to think about how Connor was tortured like that, decades ago, but still the pain existing there, on the surface, and he doesn’t want to think about how Connor has done the same things to others.

“The ICA found out about it. It was supposed to be… like a competitor. Against hired kills. But they weren’t training us to be like the hitmen in the ICA. We were supposed to kill without caring about the reason why. The ICA have a monopoly on professional hitmen like us. It’s an entire organization. They wanted their own version.”

“Hitman versus assassin?” Gavin asks.

“I don’t know if there’s a real difference,” Connor admits, forcing a small smile, but it falls apart fast. “But it’s… how I keep them straight in my head. The ICA is looking for him. Niles broke his contract when he left.”

“And what about the others? Markus and Simon? The other kids?”

  
  


**September 3rd** | 6:39 A.M.

They didn’t all make it out alive. The ICA stormed the place. They took their guardian away. They were taught to surrender—the kids. Not a real surrender, but to fake it. They can get out of prisons and escape custody. They can’t always escape from twenty soldiers pointing guns at them.

But some of them tried. They fought. They died.

Connor tries not to think about it, because he’s convinced himself that he’s okay. After the ICA took them in, they were given choices. Connor chose the one that would allow him to work for the ICA, in conjunction with Niles. They were supposed to carry on their duo to be part of their company. They were assigned Hank as a handler. They were given targets. They did their jobs.

And then Niles left. It wasn’t the life he wanted, he decided. Connor has been looking for him ever since. He has been increasingly willing to give up the fight, but he’s glad he didn’t. He wouldn’t have taken Eddie’s case if it wasn’t for the connection to his brother. He wouldn’t have found Gavin. He wouldn’t be holding his hand right now, able to finally spill out the details to someone who hasn’t already heard them from someone else in the company, whispering about child hitmen.

  
  


**September 3rd** | 6:42 A.M.

“Do you talk to anyone else that was there?”

Connor shakes his head, “I was friends with some of them but… It… was difficult. Our lives aren’t suited for relationships that last. And I was in love with one of them, and it seemed like a bad idea to keep them around when all it was going to do was hurt me.”

“You were in love?” Gavin asks, and there’s a smile on his face. “Here I thought you were a virgin loser.”

“I’m still a virgin loser, don’t worry,” Connor replies, bringing a hand up to push him lightly. “It was one-sided.”

“Did you ever confess?”

“No,” Connor says quietly. “I was too scared. I preferred to be alone than let him know.”

“Are you…” Gavin trails off, shifting in his spot. “Are you still in love with him?”

“Are you still in love with Niles?”

Gavin laughs a little, an automatic reaction to pretend that it’s a joke. _ Niles? _ No. Never. But it fades fast and he shakes his head, and he knows it’s the truth. There are times when he misses it, but he doesn’t miss Niles. He just misses being held. He misses being in love, not the _ person _he was in love with. He doesn’t feel anything towards Niles anymore, except bursts of anger when Gavin tries to place the blame of his assaults on him instead.

But he doesn’t love him.

It feels like a relief. It feels like the biggest weight lifted off his shoulders in the last six months.

He isn’t in love with Niles anymore, and he doesn’t even know when it happened. When it drifted away, when it was finally, finally gone.

“I think I might be in love with someone else now,” Connor replies, pulling Gavin from his thoughts. He’s watching the rain again. It’s picked up in the time it’s taken to tell his story. But the way Connor says the words, the contents of them, make him feel this drop of disappointment in his stomach.

“Who? North?”

Connor smiles and shakes his head, “No.”

“Someone you meet on your runs, then?” Gavin asks, mocking surprise and awe. “You’ve been lying about all your morning jogs, haven’t you? You’ve been meeting up with your boo.”

“Stop,” Connor laughs. “Shut up, will you?”

“Okay,” Gavin says quietly, leaning a little closer to him. “The ICA can’t stop you from being with someone, can they? So you should tell them. Even if you’re a scared virgin loser.”

“Terrified,” Connor whispers, correcting him. “It’s a lot scarier now than it was before.”

“Because you’re a virgin loser and it’s less socially acceptable for a thirty-three-year-old to be a virgin loser?”

“On second thought,” Connor says, standing up, moving away from him, their hands breaking apart. He was keeping Gavin so warm. He didn’t realize it until he was stepping away, letting the cold air into the space left empty. “I think I will go on my run this morning and you’ll just have to survive not making fun of my cooking if I die.”

  
  


**September 3rd **| 6:43 A.M.

It was nice. For a moment, he laughed. For a moment, he smiled and it was real. Even if it followed such a terrible life. It was still there. Maybe he values it especially because of that. Proof that he still feels.

  
  


**September 13th** | 5:07 P.M.

“There’s no new information on where he is?” Connor asks.

“No. Nothing,” Hank replies. “Look, kid, I’m sorry. He’s in the wind. He’s a ghost.”

Gone, gone, _ gone. _

  
  
  


**September 15th ** | 11:23 P.M.

Gavin sifts through the long list of ex-cons associated with Eddie’s crew. Most of them are easy to cast aside, but there’s a lot of them. He’s taking his time with this. Not because of the number of people, but because he has this fear, and it is mutating.

Before it was just hard to risk seeing their faces, even if it meant that they could find them and kill them. Now there is a fear that it won’t matter how brutally he murders them, it’s not going to change anything. He gets this moment of relief. This ability to exhale when one of them dies, but the choking feeling always comes back. Killing them isn’t going to change anything. Killing them isn’t going to bring him peace.

But it’s not about finding peace. It’s about the revenge. It’s about making sure they get what they deserve. Being locked up behind bars isn’t going to do shit to help him feel any better, why not put them in the ground where they belong? The fear he has that it isn’t going to change anything isn’t tied to Gavin no longer feeling worthless and awful, it’s tied to not being scared to be alive anymore. As long as even one of them is out there, he’s not really allowed to be a person. Not that Gavin thinks he even wants to be anymore. He rarely leaves Connor’s apartment, and he’s terrified of this being over with and proving all of his fears right.

And he’s terrified of getting to Eddie. He is terrified of killing all of them and only having the one left. He is terrified of never being able to find Eddie as much as he is of being face to face with him again. The leader, the one that called all the shots. The one that held his life in his hands, sometimes offering up the blessing of death and sometimes making Gavin’s own murder sound like a terrible option.

He went back and forth so many times with wanting to live and die while he was in that basement, and Eddie always knew what he wanted and he never gave it to him. He could always promise that if Gavin played along that he would finally let him, or he would threaten to keep him alive forever and make sure he never died. Now that he’s out—

Gavin could kill himself if he wanted to. But he needs them dead first. He is not going to be a ghost with unfinished business.

“Gav?”

He shuts the laptop, pretending that he hasn’t been staring at the same list of names and pictures for the past ten minutes, “Yeah?”

“Your phone is ringing.”

Gavin looks to where it buzzes on the coffee table. The first time in almost a year. He forgets he has it, sometimes. He only keeps it charged to fill his spare time with mindless apps. He’s been writing in the journal North gave him more and more. Letting out all of his confusing thoughts and feelings. He reread an entry once, aware of how little it made sense. The metaphors got mixed up. His thoughts blurred together. But the point was across. He hates himself. He hates his life. The only things keeping him going are the murder of three more people and—

And Connor.

And that’s when it got messy. He always liked flowers. He always liked the imagery of them. He just didn’t realize how easy it was to fill five pages with wondering if Connor was going to be like a rose with thorns that would make him bleed and ache for him. If he was going to be like a daisy, something he always felt soft and sweet and comforting, something he attributed to people like Tina and Chris. Then it got twisted. Gavin stepping on him, destroying him, leaving him worthless and broken and ruined when he left.

Gavin stopped using his phone, and it left him alone with his thoughts, and he was okay with that. But now it’s buzzing and he knows even before he reaches it who it must be that’s calling. There are only five people in the world that have his number. Connor, Niles, Chris, Tina—

_ Elijah. _

Gavin holds it in his hand like a bomb waiting to go off. The default ringtone continues until it comes to an end, the silence flooding in even worse than the explosion he imagined.

“Gavin?”

“It’s my brother,” he says quietly. “Sorry. I—”

“I can leave, if you want to talk to him alone.”

He nods, but even as Connor gets up and walks away, he doesn’t know if he would be able to bring himself to call Eli back. They fought last time they talked. It is a pattern with Gavin. He gets into one big, vicious battle and runs away and lets whatever relationship there was fall into the abyss. He doesn’t try to fix things. He can’t fix himself enough to fix others, too. Ten years and Elijah is calling him, when the damage between them is already irreparable.

The texts ring in as the door closes behind Connor. One after the other. 

_ Please pick up. _

_ Gavin please answer your phone. _

_ I need to talk to you. _

_ I’m worried. Please call me back. _

** _Please call me back, _ **Eli texts, but the phone rings right after it in Gavin’s hands and he waits. Watching. Scared. Terrified.

But he answers.

“Hello?” he whispers, his voice quiet, barely audible. He doesn’t even know if Elijah heard him.

“Vinny?” he says, his voice is frantic, worried. He hasn’t heard Eli sound like this since their mother died. He hasn’t heard someone call him _ Vinny _since he was sixteen. “Where are you?”

“I’m—” he struggles for a word. He has always had this problem since he was a child. Wherever he was staying, he would call it home. Hotels for only a few nights while on a road trip. The timeshare during a vacation. He would always refer to it as home, even the houses of his relatives when he went to visit. He wants to call Connor’s place home, and he thinks it is. It qualifies more than a motel he stayed at when he was thirteen for only a night, but the motel was home for that one night, and Connor’s place has been his home for six months now.

And he thinks about how a two weeks ago, when he laid down in Connor’s arms, when he fell asleep against his chest, how perfectly he fit there. How it felt like Connor’s body was made perfectly to fit his beside it. He never felt that way with Niles. He just felt like another body resting against his. But with Connor—

He doesn’t know why, but he feels like _ home. _

“Are you okay?”

“W-Why?” Gavin asks. He is caught off-guard. An idiot in this moment, struggling to piece together words just because his brother is talking to him.

“There’s…” Elijah trails off. “I saw something. Today. With you in it.”

“With me?”

“There’s a video,” he says quietly. “On…”

“On what?” his heart is beating fast, because he can only think of two things now. Surveillance footage or something, of Gavin killing someone. Maybe he’s forgetting something he did five years ago and it’s resurfacing. Maybe it’s not tied to the present at all.

Or the worst possible option: him, with them.

“Is it real?” Eli asks quietly.

“Is what real?” Gavin shoots back, because he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to say this. He doesn’t want this.

He didn’t want anyone to know. He didn’t want the nurse to know, but she did. He didn’t want North to know, but she found out anyway. He desperately didn’t want Connor to know, but he knew all along, and he saw the videos. Not one, but dozens. Dozens of times that only accounted for a fraction of what it really was.

And now Elijah?

It has to be what he thinks it is.

It has to be him in the basement.

“Did they rape you, Gavin?”

He had this image in his head—

That the phone would fall, that it would break. That it would be like when Eli told him their mother died and everything would fall apart in ways he didn’t expect. He remembers the phone slipping from his hand then, clattering against the pavement of the road, shattering but he didn’t care. He ran, instead. Ran back to the house, needing the body for proof.

And he thought it would be like that. Or like when he saw the videos on the screens, that he would collapse in on himself, that he would break.

But instead he stands numb, the feeling drifting away from him. The Gavin in his head desperately wishing that he is hallucinating this conversation whispering _ no, no, no _disappearing further and further back.

“Yes,” he says, and he is surprised at the ease that he says it, because everything inside of him was prepared to deny it.

“Where are you?”

“Home,” he answers, easier this time. Matter of fact. “I moved. It’s not the same place as before.”

“Text me the address. I’m coming over.”

He wants to tell him no. He doesn’t want to see Eli. But he nods instead, even though he can’t see him. There is just—

No reason to care anymore.

If Elijah knows, Chris and Tina will likely know soon, and does it matter if they do or not?

There’s a video online.

There’s a video of him being assaulted online, with enough views that Elijah saw it. That he must have stumbled across it, because Gavin knows he wouldn’t look up that kind of content, real or not, on his own. But what the fuck does it matter anymore, anyway? Elijah watched enough to know that it was Gavin.

Elijah watched him be attacked, along with thousands of others getting off on it.

He doesn’t care anymore.

  
  


**September 15th ** | 11:28 P.M.

The door opens beside him five minutes later, and Connor knows something is wrong. Gavin has the same expression he did the day he called him over to help deal with the first body. Distant. Uncaring.

“My brother wants to visit me,” he says quietly. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Gav, what happened?”

“He wants to make sure I’m okay. He’s worried. He saw a video. He was getting on his computer to jack off or something and instead he saw me, how funny is that?”

“There’s—”

Gavin shakes his head, cutting him off. He looks like he’s somewhere else, but there are still tears in his eyes. Still that little bit inside of him falling apart, “They post a video of them raping me.”

It’s the first time he’s ever really admitted it. The first time he said the word _ rape _ and not just _ attacked _ or _ what they did to me. _No longer dancing around the subject but laying it out there.

“Gavin—”

“Can I talk to you tomorrow?” he says, looking up to meet Connor’s gaze finally. “I don’t think I can do this right now.”

“Okay,” Connor says quietly. “Alright.”

This is exactly what Jefferson threatened he would do. It was his way of staying alive. All of his evidence prepared to fight against them, to hold over Gavin’s head just to stay alive. But he’s dead.

Someone else has the videos. North would’ve destroyed them all. Someone else in the group has them and they likely watch them. They have them and they know Gavin is coming after them.

  
  


**September 16th ** | 2:07 A.M.

Gavin waits until Connor falls asleep. It feels weird to so brazenly be opening up a porn website when Connor’s up. But he has to see which video it was. Which person or people they were. Elijah said _ them, _it implies more than just one person in the video, and there are a dozen combinations of the seven that assaulted him. He already knows Jefferson was there. He wasn’t a fixed structure when they came to him, but if there’s a video, Jefferson was behind the camera.

He won’t watch it past the time it takes to find out who it is. Gavin doesn’t think he could handle that, he just needs to know which of the times was special enough to put online.

It’s easy to find it. Elijah was right. It’s on the homepage. It’s _ popular, _the thumbnail a blurry image of his face, his arm held up, the rose tattoo half covered by a hand holding his arm back. It’s him. He knows it is. But not even by the tattoo, really, by the scars and the bruises he is used to. The things he saw every day when he sat crowded back against a cement wall, keeping his eyes on his scraped up knees and trying to decide if it was wrong for him to become religious in those moments, beg God for help.

The title, though—

_ THREE MEN PUNISH THEIR BITCH _

All caps. Like they’re shouting it at him. It’s like all the other titles on the homepage. All the other videos of people getting fucked. It never felt like a weird sentence to read until after all this. He never even paid attention to titles when he looked at porn before. Now he can see the strange behavior. All of the daddy doms breaking their sluts. All of the fake incest and the rape fantasies and the rough sex sitting neatly under the popular tab.

He turns the phone away for a second, letting his breaths come in shaky, letting them exhale slowly. He can’t cry. If he allows himself to cry, then it will spiral into something loud, it will spiral into something that will wake Connor. He’s a light sleeper. There have been too many nights where he has come over to sit beside the bed on the floor, leaning his head back, one hand bent upward to take Gavin’s. Letting him cry in the quiet.

There have been too many nights where Connor has fallen asleep like that, spending the day with a hand occasionally moving to his arm or his neck to ease the pain of staying that way for an extended period of time.

Gavin is fine.

He can do this.

It cannot be worse than seeing them at the apartment. He knows that this is coming now. Eli prepared him. He turns the phone back around, the like/dislike ratio on the video an even 50/50. There’s a market for rape porn. Enough people actively got off on this to keep it balanced out.

He flips around through the video. Each frame worse than the last. He looks drugged in it. His eyes are barely open, but he’s still trying to fight. He remembers that. He remembers his arms feeling like lead but still trying to push. He remembers constantly, always, wanting them off of him. Even if it meant getting slapped ten times harder in return. They didn’t drug him very often. That wasn’t what the men liked to do. They liked it when they fought.

Gavin stops, scrolling down away from the video. He remembers it now, the exact moment. The first time they did this to him. The first time there was three and the first time they drugged him and the first time two of them forced their way inside at the same time, because they always drugged him when they did that. Because he fought too hard otherwise. Because it would’ve been too difficult. Drugging him made his body relax enough that they didn’t have to worry.

All of them are already dead. He knows that. One of them is the man that Connor shot, sitting outside of his cell, keeping a close eye on him. Gavin never saw the body, but he trusts him. He knows Connor wouldn’t lie about that. The man that worked at the butcher shop. The man that followed Gavin home to his apartment. And Jefferson.

They’re all dead, except the doctor. The one that provided them with the pills to shove down his throat. He wishes he could’ve gotten more. Either dead or entirely asleep would’ve been preferred to vaguely recalling the feeling of them violating him.

He doesn’t know why he’s torturing himself like this—

But he scrolls down, looking at the comments. Needing someone to be as angry as he is, to be voicing their hatred for allowing this online. But what is he going to do? Report it? Prove that he’s the one in the video, prove that somehow, this is real, even though he didn’t go to the police? Even though they’re all dead, so they can’t defend themselves and they’d have to take Gavin’s word, like it’s worth anything, like the world ever believes a person when they say something like this happened to them?

> _ Can someone do this to me? _
> 
> |_ ;) _
> 
> _ They weren’t rough enough imo he looks like a little bitch that needs to learn his lesson a little better _
> 
> _ Soo hot. Wish I could’ve been a part of this. _
> 
> _ Yall are fucking sick for enjoying this _
> 
> |_ it’s fake you dumb bitch _
> 
> _ When he starts to fight at 8:53? That made me cum _
> 
> _ I’m a girl but this is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen _
> 
> _ Is anyone concerned that this might be real? Guy looks drugged out of his mind _
> 
> | _nah he’s just good at playing it up for the camera _

  
  


**September 16th ** | 2:23 A.M.

Gavin leans back against the wall, the contents of his stomach empty. As if they weren’t empty before. He hurts. His entire body aches with the need to get something out. He wishes he had a knife. He wishes he could carve it from his inside. He wishes he could just get out from inside of him and be the shell left behind.

Numbness is addictive, and he wants it back. For just a moment, he wants it back.

“Gavin?” Connor says, like he always does. He has perfected it, with how much practice he has at saying his name like that. Soft, gentle, questioning. “What happened?”

Not _ are you okay? _

It is too obvious he isn’t.

“E-Every time,” Gavin says, and he means to say it quietly, to minimize his words, to minimize the confession into something so quiet that somehow it will seem less vulnerable, but the sobs getting in the way of his words make it hard. “I think I’m getting better, I just fucking get thrown back. And I was h-happy, a few days ago, earlier. I was—I was happy. With you. Even though you told me about all this awful shit, you still managed to smile. You made me happy. You make me happy. B-but it never fucking matters.”

He is saying too much. He isn’t saying enough. But Connor is there, beside him, and his hands are so gentle when they hold his face, when they brush away the tears. And Gavin wishes he had the strength to joke, to tell him he shouldn’t be doing this when he’s falling in love with someone else, someone that can’t be Gavin, because he is too broken to love.

“Talk to me,” Connor says quietly. “Please.”

He hates how much—

How just—

How Connor feels like home. Not this stupid apartment, which feels empty and barren and like the walls are pressing in on him when he’s left alone for a few days. But _ Connor _. How comfortable he is, how nice it feels to be with him. He hates how easy the silence after his words are to fill, how he could say anything and he knows it would be okay.

He is done comparing Connor to Niles, because there is no point to compare them anymore. They are completely different. They are separate. One of them participated in his destruction and the other was here to help pick up the pieces.

“I looked up the video,” he says quietly. “To see what it was. Elijah watched it. Or enough of it to know it was me. I just… I wanted to see. And the comments…”

Gavin is quiet, for a long moment he is quiet. He doesn’t know why this is the harder part to admit. What they said, how they affected him, when he compares what it was like that moment in Jefferson’s room when the videos broke him. But the videos already broke him. The people commenting on how sexy his rape was are new. They are coming from different people than the men whispering it into his ear in that basement.

“They just…” he is struggling with words, struggling to say this to Connor. Maybe if it was someone else, maybe if it was North, it would be easier. She would understand more, wouldn’t she? “They were asking for more videos of me. They wanted them to hurt me more than they already had. There were people commenting about how much they wished they were them or they were me.”

And if they want to be like him? They can have it. They can have the trauma. They can have the pain. They can have the feeling of humiliation, the feeling of constantly being watched, of being moments away from having it happen again. They can have it all. Every last ounce of pain. Every last nanosecond he spent in that room. Every moment after, when he couldn’t sleep, when he couldn’t eat, when he would sit in a shower until his skin was angry and raw and tired of being scrubbed over and over again and only ever remembering the ice cold buckets of water they left for him once a month. They can have the moments of guilt, when he thinks about ever being touched again and associating every last inch of his skin with somewhere they touched, they poisoned.

They can have it.

“I don’t know,” he whispers, because he doesn’t know what else to say, except he does.

He has a hundred things to say, but right now he feels the need to apologize. To take it all back. He remembers being called a pathetic baby by them when he started to cry. He remembers them laughing and saying that Gavin was throwing a tantrum when he tried to get them off. And he feels awful and guilty all over again for putting this onto Connor, to making him hear and listen to these things.

“Gavin…” Connor says, and his hands shift from his face, one on his neck, caressing his cheek, the other finding his hand, threading their fingers together. He brings them up to his lips, brushing a kiss against his knuckles. “I’m sorry.”

_ Stop, _ he wants to say. _ Stop, _ because he can’t handle this. The gentlest touches are the ones that break him the most. The ones he doesn’t deserve, the ones that make him wish he could lean forward and collapse against Connor again and take, take, take, until there is nothing left of Connor just like there is nothing left of him.

He will ruin Connor if he stays. And Connor likes someone already.

But he doesn’t tell him to stop, because the kiss is already done, even if their hands stay together, and he does want this. He doesn’t want to tell him to stop because he wants it to stop, he wants to say it because he craves more, and Gavin can see what his presence in Connor’s life is doing. He is pulling him down with him.

“I hate them,” Gavin replies. “Not Eddie and the others but… the people who commented. I hate them.”

Connor nods. He doesn’t tell him he’s wrong. He allows Gavin this selfish need to hate more and more. It is the only thing that has kept him going for so long.

“Some of them kept…” he trails off, the words building up again with the fury, because that is always how it will be. “They kept trying to say it was fine because it was fake. And I just—I don’t—I don’t fucking care if it was real or not. I don’t care if it was me. I don’t care what fucking delusion they have that it’s fine they get off on it as long as they convince themselves it’s not real. It’s happened to someone. Even if it was fake in the video, it happened to someone, didn’t it? It always happens to someone. Someone is always being hurt by someone. They think it’s… it’s _ fine _because it’s just fucking fiction in their head as if—”

He stops himself for a moment, watching the worry on Connor’s face, how it hasn’t moved since he got in here. He is always so concerned for Gavin, and he thinks of the people, the few and far between, that commented on the video saying people were sick for saving it to their favorites and putting it on playlists with videos like it, and it makes him wonder how many of the people disliked the video thinking that, not saying it, and how many people disliked the video just because Gavin wasn’t hot enough for them.

“I don’t fucking care,” he whispers. “If they think it’s fine because it’s not real. My… my _ rape _ is being sexualized by thousands of strangers. And it’s not just the video. It’s not just that one video. It’s stories people write. It’s people role playing in their bedrooms. How hot it is to take a piece of someone like that and destroy it. I don’t feel like a person anymore because of what they did to me. They could’ve just done it once and I still would’ve felt—not even like a _ ghost. _Like less than that. A shadow of one. And people are out there wishing they could do it and jacking off at night thinking about it and it’s—I’m a fucking ghost and no one gives a shit because they’re too busy looking for their next orgasm.”

“You’re not a ghost, Gavin.”

“I was more, before, though,” he says quietly. “Before they hurt me. I had… dreams. I had h-hope. I was a person. I wanted to write music. I had a decent job as a hacker. What am I now?”

He had a future. He was going to get his shit together. He was going to fix his life. He was going to get over Niles. He was going to eventually convince himself to text Eli and Chris and try to get parts of his life back. He was going to apologize to Tina, and now he can’t even look at her messages without feeling guilty and wrong and like he will never be a fraction of who he was before.

He was alive, before.

He doesn’t feel that now. He doesn’t even feel the desire to try and utilize pain or bad feelings to make himself feel alive anymore, because they are the only things he ever feels. Pain and sadness and anger and suffering. He was happy, a few days ago, making fun of Connor, smiling, seeing Connor smile.

Connor makes him happy but it doesn’t even scratch the surface of what he was capable of two years ago, before everything in the world came crashing down when eight people decided to tear his soul apart piece by piece, over and over again.

“There’s still hope,” Connor whispers. “You can still have a future. You can still have a life.”

He shakes his head as Connor pulls away. An outright refusal. A denial of anything ever existing beyond this feeling. He starts to speak, his words pausing when Connor pulls a necklace from around his neck, hidden underneath his shirt. Gavin has seen it before. A quarter hanging on a silver chain. The quarter from his story, the quarter he kept hidden from anyone else.

“When Seven gave me this it was a promise that we were going to make it out alive,” he says. “I’m going to promise the same thing to you.”

Gavin shakes his head again, a hand coming up to stop him, “It’s yours. And it’s not going to do shit, Connor.”

“It will,” Connor says. “And I’m not giving it to you. I’m letting you borrow it.”

“Until I feel better?” Gavin asks. “That’ll never happen.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he replies. “But Gavin, there’s no… there’s no going back to who you were before this. But you can recover. You can become someone new.”

He doesn’t want new, sometimes. He wants the old. He wants himself. He doesn’t want to craft himself back up again from nothing.

“They took everything from me,” he says. “There’s… there’s nothing left.”

“There is,” Connor says, placing a hand against his chest, over his heart. “There’s you. And you are… incredible.”

“Incredible?”

“Strong and brave. Angry, but righteous. And you’re funny. And so dense, but it’s your best quality.”

“My stupidity is my best quality?” he shakes his head. “You’re doing a real shit job making me feel better you know that, right?”

Connor smiles and that smile is enough for Gavin to not comment that he isn’t strong at all. That he is weak. He is sitting on a bathroom floor crying because of comments from strangers. He is pathetic and stupid and a necklace isn’t going to fix that.

It’s so stupid. Gavin wants to tell him how stupid this is, because he wants to cover it up. He wants to pretend that the necklace being clasped around his neck doesn’t mean as much to him as it really does. 

The quarter rests against his chest, right where his heart is, right where Connor’s hand was just before. It is a comforting weight, almost as comforting as Connor’s body when he leans forward and crushes Gavin with his hug.

Eli will be here in a week, and Gavin doesn’t know how to explain any of this to him. He doesn’t even know how to explain it to himself.

_ What are they? What are they doing? What is this? _

He doesn’t know. He just doesn’t want it to go away. He doesn’t want this to end.


	7. Sacredly (part two)

**September 18th ** | 10:13 P.M.

Gavin draws a line through the calendar he’s crudely marked in his journal. Another day to cross off. Another day closer to some mysterious end. He doesn’t know what these are amounting to. He doesn’t know what’s happening in this little notebook of his. Words and memories filling the pages. Not everything is linked to what happened to him in the basement. Some of it is other things, too. There are three pages of him trying to convince himself to stop caring about Connor the way he does. He ended it with a short, messy  _ I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know,  _ which is how he’s starting to end a lot of these entries.

There are song lyrics, too. He hasn’t written anything like that in five years. It feels good, putting his emotions into words like that. Knowing how they would sound, the kind of instrumental that would be backing them. He hasn’t properly sang since college. He gave it up when everyone else did. But he still likes the songs. He still likes arranging the words together.

He has five days until Elijah comes to visit. Five days to pretend like he isn’t the cause of five people’s deaths. He doesn’t think it’s the type of thing he can confess to Eli and trust that it wouldn’t be shared. Brotherly love doesn’t extend as far as murder, Gavin doesn’t think. And he isn’t going to chance it to figure out if it’s the truth.

  
  


**September 19th ** | 2:22 P.M.

“I have something stupid to ask you.”

“Okay.”

“Can you pretend we’re dating? When Eli gets here?”

“Why?”

He looks over to the bedroom, “There’s only one bed. And it’s… easier to explain that I’m living with a boyfriend than a hitman. Or crashing on my friend’s couch for six months.”

It is easier to explain than trying to say anything even remotely close to the truth. He knows that isn’t how it’s supposed to work. When people go undercover, they are always told to stick to as much of the truth as possible. Twist it so they aren’t even technically lies. Pick names similar to their own so they still respond to it. Gavin doesn’t need to go through those lengths, and he doesn’t want to tell Eli that he’s staying with Connor because he’s weak and pathetic and can’t manage it on his own. He just wants an easier lie that’s better to believe. He lives with Connor because they’re in love, not because he can’t sleep at night in the dark by himself. Not because there are nights when he is worried something inside of him still clinging on will break and there will be no one there to stop him from acting upon that desire to end things himself.

“Okay. Yeah. Sure.”

  
  


**September 23rd ** | 5:46 P.M.

Connor comes with him to pick up Eli from the airport. Gavin doesn’t want to go alone. He hasn’t driven in over a year. He is scared to. There’s too much he could do if the impulse hit him. He prefers to be the passenger. To watch the people walking on the streets as they pass by. To look at their shiny black umbrellas pop when the rain starts to come down too heavy.

They pull up on the side of the curb, Eli on the edge, waiting by himself. Crouched underneath the eaves and his eyes on his phone. He looks different than Gavin remembers him. It’s been longer than he remembers.

_ Eli got old. _

And at first he thinks of it as a joke to make to poke fun of him but then he realizes it’s the truth. They spent so much time apart refusing to talk to each other or see each other that Elijah has wrinkles now, around his eyes. Subtle things that mark him as someone in his mid-thirties versus his early twenties.

Eli got old and Gavin feels something inside of him drop as he steps out of the car and walk toward him. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let this happen? How could he have allowed this feud to carry on for so many years that he would refuse to even see his own brother and know what’s happening with him? Eli could be married by now. He could have kids. He could have anything in the world and Gavin wouldn’t know because he was too stubborn to fucking apologize and hope Eli would accept it.

Gavin could’ve died in that basement without ever making up with his brother again, and would Eli even know? Would Eddie and the others have let his body be discovered so Gavin and Tina could have some semblance of peace that he was dead and not just a piece of shit that refused to talk to them ever again?

“Hey, idiot,” Gavin says, but his voice doesn’t have the same kind of tone as it used to. It’s just empty now. Lifeless. Saying the words because it’s what he’s used to.

“If I’m the idiot, what does that make you, Vinny?” Eli asks, taking a step forward to him. He leaves his suitcase where it is, opting instead to hug Gavin. And he is tentative about it. Scared, maybe.

Gavin lets him. He doesn’t remember the last time he hugged Eli. He doesn’t even know if he ever has. But this is how they’re going to play it. Like nothing ever happened. Maybe that’s for the best.

“Missed you,” he says quietly. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. I told you,” Gavin replies. “You didn’t need to come here.”

“Says you,” Eli pulls away from him. “You’ve always said you were fine. You think anyone’s going to believe you now, Vin?”

“Get your shit and lets go,” Gavin says, turning away. “I’m getting fuckin’ drenched out here because you decided to get all sentimental and emotional.”

  
  


**September 23rd ** | 7:13 P.M.

“Gavin? Can you come here?”

He disappears from the couch, where him and Eli have sat in near silence, only breaking it to ask basic questions.  _ How long have you lived here? Has anything happened in the last few years? You spoken to Tina? _

It has been the most awkward conversation to eavesdrop on, and it is a thousand times worse than whatever happened in the car. Utter silence that came in once they started to drive away. The only words said in the thirty minute trip  _ hey, I’m Elijah.  _ And  _ Hi, I’m Connor.  _

“What?”

“I’m going to go,” Connor says quietly. “To the store… or something. So you can be alone with him.”

“Do not leave me alone with him.”

“He’s your brother, Gavin, you’ll be fine. Sides, I think he wants to talk to you and me lingering around here isn’t helping,” Connor says. “It’s fine. You’ll be fine.”

“You’ll be back?”

“This is my apartment.”

“But you’ll be back, like, tonight? Within an hour?”

“I’ll be back in three. And if things are still…” he trails off, making a gesture with his hands that is as indescribably awkward as whatever is happening between Gavin and Elijah. “We can go to the movies. Or something. We’ll just go to the theater every second of the day he’s here. Then we won’t have to talk.”

“Good plan.”

“You’re mocking me, but I know you’re already thinking it through,” he says, reaching for his keys. “I’ll be back. You can text me if you need me, alright?”

“Yeah. Fine. This is a dick move, though.”

“You’ll be fine,” Connor repeats. “He’s your brother. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  
  


**September 23rd ** | 7:21 P.M.

“Are you going to talk to me or are you going to sit in silence like an angry baby?”

Gavin leans forward, picking up the pillow that tipped off the couch, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“Anything,” Eli replies. “How did you meet Connor? He seems like... a person.”

“You’ve known him for two seconds, Eli, what do you want him to do?” he asks. “He’s not an alien.”

“Nothing. You two seem very… together.”

“Shut up,” Gavin says, tossing the pillow his direction. “He’s… nice. He’s good. He’s a good person.”

“How did you meet him?” Eli repeats. “Was it before or after…?”

“After,” Connor says quietly. No need to lie about that, although he thinks Eli would prefer if it was before. He’s his big brother. He doesn’t seem like he would be fond of them living together so soon after they met. But there’s really no date on the video. Just the one where it was published to the internet for all the fucked up pieces of garbage to see and consume. “It was after.”

“Are you going to tell me  _ how?” _

He is trying to think of a good lie, but he can’t, “The hospital. Then a cafe a little while later.”

“The hospital?”

Gavin nods slowly, refusing to look at him. He wishes he still had the pillow. Something he could mess with. There are tassels on it. Connor always gets annoyed when Gavin sits with it because he braids the strands together. Or maybe Gavin just thinks Connor gets annoyed with him about it. He’s always watching Gavin, like he is about to explode.

Or implode.

There’s a difference. Self-destruction versus destroying everyone else in the process, too. Or something like that. Gavin doesn’t know what he’s trying to call himself now. Eli is here and it has made everything strange.

“Why was he there, Vin?”

“He found me.”

“He found you?” Elijah asks, leaning forward. “Are you sure—Are you sure he’s not… one of them?”

“One of them?” Gavin asks, glancing up to him. “No. Of course not. Are you fucking crazy?”

“I just—”

“I remember their faces, Eli,” he says quietly. “I remember what they looked like. He wasn’t there. And he wouldn’t do that. Ever.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

They sit in silence for a long time. Gavin half-tempted to get up and steal the pillow back from Eli. Eli doing the same thing Gavin does. The tassels getting braided together, taken apart again, braided together—

“I don’t know how to do this,” Eli says quietly.

“I don’t either.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says. “We don’t talk. We used to be best friends. Do you remember the other kids in school thinking it was weird how well we got along?”

“Yeah and then you punched me at recess and they were all so happy to learn we were normal siblings. Although I don’t think they expected me to give you a bloody nose in fifth grade.”

Eli smiles softly, “Yeah. You always threw a nasty punch.”

“It’s my one strength.”

“And I’m glad I was the one to teach you,” he replies. “Can I ask you something, Vinny? Did you go to the police?”

Gavin shakes his head, “No. I didn’t want anyone to know what they did. I especially didn’t want  _ you  _ to know. Or Connor. I was convinced that if I didn’t say anything nobody could figure it out, but that was pretty stupid wasn’t it?”

“No. Not at all.”

“So you don’t think I’m an idiot for not going to the police? Reporting everyone involved?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Eli replies. “It’s… your decision. It should be yours alone.”

“They could be hurting other people,” Gavin says quietly. And that is one of his biggest fears—always has been.

They could be hurting so many other people. They could’ve hurt or killed so many people. And they will never get their justice. They will never be able to have their peace. Only Gavin will. It’s a selfish thing he’s doing here.

“It’ll be my fault if they do,” he says quietly.

“It’s not your fault,” Eli replies. “It’s not on you, Gavin. It’s on them.”

He nods, like he believes him, “I don’t want to talk about this, Eli.”

“Okay. We don’t have to.”

“But you want to.”

“I’m worried about you, that’s all,” he says. “You don’t talk to people when something is wrong. You just… keep it all held in. You’re always so surprised when people can see it, but you’re not as good at hiding it as you think you are. You just push everyone away.”

He wishes he could say something. He wishes he could say that he doesn’t push Connor away. He wishes he could refute that with anything in the world.

But he has nothing. Gavin has nothing.

The truth is just that nobody has ever felt safe enough to tell these things to.

  
  


**September 23rd ** | 8:16 P.M.

Gavin and Elijah are cooking when Connor gets back. He can hear the laughs through the door before he gets it unlocked, and when Gavin looks to the door and smiles, it is likely the first smile he has ever seen out of Gavin that has been so big and genuine.

“What are you making?” he asks, setting his bag down, moving closer to the stove, to Gavin.

They’re trying to pretend to be together, but they have barely done anything to show it. They haven’t changed much of what they already do. Gavin already goes through his phases of standing too close or too far from Connor, and to be quite honest with himself, Connor doesn’t think they needed to do anything to convince Eli. It’s not that there’s only one bed, it’s what happened to Gavin. It is believable to think he would keep PDA to a minimum. To keep affection to a minimum in general. But Connor still comes to his side, falling into the familiarity of close quarters when they cook together.

“Meatloaf without the meat.”

“And what is it if there’s no meat?” Connor asks.

“Beans,” Elijah says. “You have like fifty cans of them.”

“And mushrooms. Our mom used to make it. It’s good. I promise. It’ll at least be better than anything you’ve made.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he replies. “Okay. Go ahead. Continue. I won’t bother you.”

“You sound like an old man,” Gavin says.

“Yeah, Grandpa Reed would come over every Christmas and see us in the living room playing Pokemon and he’d just go  _ Continue, boys, I won’t bother you.”  _ Elijah says. “As if he could really get our attention when we were trying to defeat gym leaders.”

“I’m not an old man,” Connor says. “I’m younger than both of you.”

“You’re an old man.”

“I don’t like this,” Connor says quietly to Gavin. “I’m not inviting him over again. You two team up on me. It’s not fair.”

“You don’t have any brothers?” Eli asks.

“No,” he says, acutely aware of the way Gavin’s body tenses, the way the smile starts to slip from his face. “Only child.”

“Shame. You’re cute. Thought I wanted a Connor of my own.”

“Sorry,” Connor says, forcing a smile onto his face before turning back to Gavin. “I’m going to go get some work done.”

“Okay,” Gavin says quietly.

Connor wants to ask him if he’s okay. He would if Eli wasn’t here. He would if Eli wasn’t still smiling as if nothing happened. He didn’t notice Gavin’s shift. He didn’t pick up on the words that caused it. Connor can’t ask him if he’s okay, but he does place a tentative, soft kiss against Gavin’s temple before he steps away, leaving them to the kitchen. Gavin clears his throat, jumping into a story from their childhood. Something about when the kids tried to cook dinner for their mom one day. Not even a special holiday—just a random day of the week. How they failed so miserably they had to ask their father to help.

Connor listens to it as he pretends to work. He glances up from his screen every so often to see how they interact with each other. How sometimes their brief fights that sound real and full of genuine frustration, the two of them are actually still smiling along like it’s a joke.

Eli is good for Gavin. It’s all Connor can think about. It is good for Gavin to be with his family.

Connor hasn’t forgotten that he’s supposed to move next year. He just tries not to think about it too often. What will happen to him and Gavin. What will happen to Gavin in general. He can’t keep this apartment in his name, but maybe he could find a way to pass it on to Gavin without raising suspicion at the ICA. Maybe he can help him find a different place.

He just wants to keep Gavin like this, though. Frozen in this moment where he is laughing and smiling and he doesn’t seem to be forcing it in any way whatsoever.

  
  


**September 23rd ** | 11:11 P.M.

Elijah sleeps on the couch, and Gavin wasn’t aware of the proximity of the living room to the bedroom until they started to get ready for the night. Gavin hadn’t realized how much he wanted a moment alone with Connor, either. To tell him about how this is going better than he expected. How even when Elijah’s laughter starts to fade and the concerned expression settles in again, things feel a little bit better than they had before.

The three get ready for bed, the apartment plummeting into complete darkness for the first time since Gavin has been here. But it’s alright, he thinks. He has two people to protect him now, and he knows they both will. He lays on the bed as far from Connor as he can manage. A thousand things he wants to say building up inside of him. He opts instead to reach out across the small space, resting his hand in between them.

Connor reaches out too, their pinkies looping together. The small contact is enough to make him smile. Smile like how he had when Connor had kissed him early. Tiny things that make him feel a little less broken.

They stay like that for a moment. Connor returning his smile with one of his own. And then Connor’s hand moves, reaching up and brushing along the side of Gavin’s face, like he is mapping it out in the darkness so gently that it feels like the shadows themselves are the things caressing his features. Gavin is almost grateful for the forced silence. He doesn’t know what he would say otherwise. But his hand moves, too. Reaching out and resting on Connor’s side, a question of whether or not he can come closer. An admission that he wants to.

Not for comfort. Just for Connor.

He doesn’t know if Connor understands or not, because Connor isn’t really looking at his face. He’s watching Gavin’s mouth. Gavin is acutely aware that Connor is looking at his lips, and is trying his hardest not to bite them or say something. He is too aware of how he is breathing, with them parted just slightly. He is too aware that they are chapped and that he feels like he needs to go drink a gallon of water to make up for it.

But Gavin is watching Connor’s mouth, too. The slight curve of it, like he is not quite smiling. Gavin doesn’t know what this is. What this means. He just knows what he wants. He wants to kiss him. He wants to lay there forever and not move. He wants to stay like this, feeling safe.

So he doesn’t know why he is risking his safety when he moves closer to Connor, when he shifts in the bed so that he is as close to Connor as he can manage. And it becomes easier and easier, with the way Connor’s hands rest on his body, like he is supporting him.

Gavin can’t ask him if this is okay. Connor can’t either. They can’t respond to each other without risking Eli hearing them, and Gavin doesn’t want Eli to hear them. So he is quiet and he moves slowly when he leans up to kiss Connor. He is cautious and terrified and he has never felt so completely scared by kissing someone like this before. He has never been so scared that someone would reciprocate it.

Connor’s lips are soft and he tastes like mint toothpaste and there is an overwhelming scent of fresh linens and strawberries and everything Gavin thought it would be and everything he hoped it would be and yet there’s more. There is more underneath it all, making the thing in his chest feel a little less caged in and broken and a little more fluttering and fleeting. But it doesn’t go anywhere. It stays, it lingers in his lungs like a butterfly caught there.

When he pulls away, Connor’s hand is back on his face, but this time he isn’t tracing the shape of his jaw, he is wiping away tears that have spilled and Gavin knew that he was crying, but there is something in the way that Connor treats him, how he endlessly treats Gavin, that makes him not care that of all the people in the world were to see him this vulnerable and stupid, he is fine that it’s Connor. He is happy, even.

He trusts him with this.

  
  


**September 24th ** | 4:55 A.M.

He wakes up to the alarm, struggling with the unfamiliar weight in his arms to shut it off. When he turns back, Gavin is wiggling against him, struggling to settle back into the warm place he was curled up into before. He’s awake. He’s always awake. Connor fell asleep, drifting off into such a deep sleep he didn’t think he could be pulled from it so easily. It still lingers in the back of his head, taunting him to close his eyes again, to let this moment continue on until late.

But he can also feel the itch to run. To feel the cold air of morning and watch the sun rise as he loops around the city.

“Gavin?” he whispers quietly. “I have to get up.”

Gavin doesn’t say anything. But he lets out this tiny sound. A refusal in its tone. He’s so warm and the room is so cold, Connor almost lets him win like that. With the tiny noise and the warmth of his body and the way he's clinging to Connor.

“Gav?”

“Stay,” he whispers. “Please.”

“Okay,” Connor replies. It is easy to give into this. Easier to give in than he thought. Maybe it’s the way Gavin’s voice sounds when he is groggy and sleepy, maybe it is the way his arms curl a little tighter around Connor’s waist. Maybe it is the nudging of Gavin’s face against his neck that sends a fluttery feeling through his body and makes a smile appear on his face.

But it is easy to give in, and he lets himself close his eyes again and imagine a world where something like this might happen once more.

He doesn’t know why Gavin kissed him. He doesn’t know why Gavin is holding onto him this way. They won’t be able to talk until Eli leaves. Not really. One more night. One more night and Connor can figure out if the kiss meant what he hopes it does or what he thinks it might. He is trying his hardest not to get his hopes up.

  
  


**September 24th ** | 9:48 A.M.

“Gavin?” Connor whispers, moving to his side. Eli is in the bathroom. Their one sliver of being alone. Two minutes, tops, Connor thinks. “Can we talk—”

“Last night was a mistake,” Gavin says back, his voice just as quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“Gavin—”

“Can we just pretend it never happened?” Gavin asks, looking up to him. “Please?”

Connor expected it.

Connor expected it, and yet, he feels like someone has still hurt him. A betrayal mixed in with all of it. Salt in the wound reminding him that he’s never actually been kissed before. That Gavin was the first and he pulled away and said  _ it was a mistake. _

“Yeah. Okay.”

  
  


**September 24th ** | 12:06 P.M.

They go out for lunch. Connor had a point. Going somewhere helps relieve some of the tension of staying inside. Going to the diner down the street gives them something to do, to focus on instead of talking. Gavin walks between Connor and Elijah, his shoulders bumping with both of theirs, keeping his eyes on his feet and trying not to think about the people around him. Not just Connor, who he kissed, and not just Elijah, who he abandoned, but the strangers who he keeps thinking are looking at him.

Like they know him.

He doesn’t want to be out here. He’s trying his hardest but he doesn’t want to be here.

Gavin catches Connor’s sleeve when they reach the place, Eli walking in front of them as Connor comes to a halt beside him.

“Can you give us a second?” Gavin asks Eli.

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll get us a booth.”

“Something wrong, Gavin?” Connor asks, turning to him.

“I want to go back,” he says quietly. “To the apartment.”

“Why?”

“I don’t—” he is struggling for words. It is hard to say stuff like this. It makes him feel paranoid and stupid. It makes him feel childish and annoying. “I don’t feel safe out here. I just—I want to go back. Can you give me the keys?”

“I’ll protect you.”

Gavin laughs, surprising himself by not doing it out of nerves or to break the tension, but because he actually finds it funny that Connor would say it. It’s not that he doubts Connor  _ could _ or  _ would _ —he has before and he probably will again—but it’s a diner, it’s not a murderer that he might freeze up and be incapable of killing. It’s a  _ diner.  _ And it's so stupidly cheesy when he says it that Gavin can't possibly  _ not  _ laugh. 

“It’s not your job to protect me,” Gavin replies.

“It is, remember?” he says. “I’m your guardian angel.”

He smiles weakly, vaguely remembering calling him that. A long, long time ago. Lifetimes, it feels. He was a slightly different person then, but vastly different, too. He hadn’t kissed Connor then. He had only wanted to, and it wasn’t even because of the fact he wanted to kiss  _ Connor.  _ He just wanted to kiss  _ somebody.  _ To prove that he could. When he kissed Connor last night, it wasn’t like that. He did genuinely want him, and for a moment, he convinced himself he could have him. It's different now.

“Connor—”

“Hey,” he says, cutting Gavin off. Connor’s hands are on his face, forcing Gavin to look at him. “I’ll keep you safe. I promise.”

For a moment, there is this surge of anger inside of him. That it isn’t the point that Connor could keep him safe. It’s the fact that he feels unsafe to begin with. That he wants to be able to keep  _ himself  _ safe. But then there are Connor’s words, there is the genuine look of concern on his face, there is his hands on his cheeks and the way they have stepped closer to each other than they had been before and it is easy to give in to staying just out of wanting to keep this distance between them closed.

“Okay.”

“You’ll stay?”

“Yes.”

Connor smiles again. That stupid soft and sweet smile that kills Gavin a little bit every time he sees it. And when he takes Gavin’s hand again, when he brushes the same kiss against his forehead that he had done the night before—

All of that is the reward for staying. Of sacrificing this need to be alone to be with the only person he wants to be with.

  
  


**September 24th ** | 12:32 P.M.

“I have news,” Eli says, announcing it like a speech. “I’ve decided to move back to Detroit.”

The timing of it is awful. Gavin sucks in a breath, the water in his hand catching in his throat, making him sputter and cough, a hand coming up to his mouth, “You  _ what?” _

“Relax,” he says. “It’s not about you. It’s for work.”

“Yeah?” Gavin says, trying his best not to choke on the water in his lungs. “Convenient timing.”

“It was before… this,” Elijah says, glancing over to Connor. “Three months ago to be exact. I’m killing two birds with one stone here.”

“Am I one of the birds?”

“Yes,” he replies. Gavin reaches for the straw wrapper on the table where it landed after he had twisted the end and blown it towards Eli’s face like they were kids again. He balls it up now, flicking it towards him.

“I, for one, think it’s a good idea,” Connor says.

“You do?”

“Yes,” he tilts his head to the side, watching Gavin watch Eli watch Connor. A vicious circle. “You two seem good for each other.”

“Wait till I beat the shit out of him tonight,” Gavin says, narrowing his eyes. “Why are you moving back? I thought you were supposed to be off living the shitty New York dream.”

“New York dream died,” Elijah replies. “I want to be home now. Are you really mad about this?”

“I don’t need my brother prying into my life more than he already has.”

“Considering we haven’t really seen each other for ten years, that would be difficult to do less of,” Elijah says, leaning forward. “Come on. It’s not like I’m going to check in on you two randomly, and you can’t stop me from moving back, Vinny.”

“I know,” he says. “But this doesn’t mean I’m going to your shitty Christmas parties.”

“I wouldn’t want that anyway. You ruin them. Connor can come, though. If he wants."

Gavin smiles, searching for another thing on the table he can toss at him. Truly like a thirteen-year-old again, but he doesn’t have the paper placemats to tear off into little paper footballs anymore. Connor might be right. This might be okay. This might be good for the two of them. Gavin has missed his brother, but he also missed him in the way that can only truly be fulfilled when he sees Elijah once a year instead of once a week.

Maybe he’s pushing it, anyway. Elijah has always been busy. They still probably won’t see each other that often.

But what is he going to do when him and Connor finish this? When the last one of them is dead and they part ways? How is Gavin ever going to explain that other than by trying to minimize the damage by claiming it’s just a break up?

“Can you let me out?” he says, turning to Connor.

He nods, slipping out of the booth, letting Gavin escape from the safe confines of the corner and disappear toward the bathroom. He needs a moment to breathe, to think.

He never thought of this before. Or, he did. He has thought about the fact that this will end eventually. He just didn’t think about how much it was going to hurt to never see or talk to Connor again. It feels already like a hole is in his chest thinking about it. Making a starting point for his body to tear itself open when it loses the one person he trusts.

Eli will be here. Gavin can make him help pick up the pieces. He can lean on his brother for support. But there is something in the back of his head screaming that he is not going to survive without Connor. He knows it isn’t true. Connor is just a person, and Gavin can continue living, breathing, existing without him. But he doesn’t  _ want  _ to, and that thought is enough to make everything feel a little bit like a crushing weight on his chest.

  
  


**September 24th ** | 12:36 P.M.

“I was telling the truth,” Connor says. “I do think it would be good for you and him to be around each other more. I haven’t seen him laugh like that until you came to visit.”

“Yeah?” Eli asks. “He seems happy with you.”

Connor shrugs, “It comes and goes. He’s a very closed off person.”

“If it makes you feel better, he’s always been that way,” he replies. “And I’ve never seen him act with someone like he acts with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s not a fan of people…  _ touching _ him, you know? He doesn’t like it when people hug him. But he lets you hug him in public around a bunch of randoms. And when you kissed him last night? He had this big dopey smile on his face the entire time,” he says. “You make him happy. Even if you don’t make him laugh like I do. I’ll give you some pointers on that, by the way. We can start an email chain.”

Connor laughs, glancing back to the bathroom doors. He is waiting for Gavin to come back like he needs him here. But talking with Eli on their own is nice, too. Yesterday when he first showed up, Connor was worried that the days would pass by slow and painful until Eli would eventually leave, but instead he is finding it easy to talk to him. It’s nice, having this break from everything else. Something to occupy Gavin’s mind that isn’t the others.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Elijah asks.

He looks back to him, biting his bottom lip, “Yeah. I do.”

“See?” he says. “Same dopey smile as him. Just don’t hurt him, okay?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Good,” he says quietly. “Because I’d have to kill you, and I don’t know how to dispose of a body, so I would be risking real jail time.”

Connor leans on his hand, “Nobody would vote you guilty, Elijah. They’d all know I deserved it.”

“Right answer. I like you.”

  
  


**September 24th ** | 2:09 P.M.

Elijah leaves to meet up with someone to show him apartments, and Gavin has been quiet since he came back to the table. He knows Connor is watching him, waiting for a moment to ask him if he’s okay. He is trying his best not to give it to him, but when they wave Elijah goodbye for the evening, he knows it’s coming. Gavin drags his feet on the way back to the apartment, being trailed along like a petulant child.

But they eventually reach the apartment, and they eventually walk into the quiet of the elevator and they eventually make it down the hallway and into the small space, devoid of any Eli to save them from this. And the breath that Gavin had been keeping locked up inside of him stays there, waiting as the pressure builds.

“What happened, Gavin?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Gavin—” Connor stops, setting down the keys on the counter, leaning against it. “You kissed me last night, and then this morning you told me it was nothing. And I understand why you don’t like leaving the apartment, but when Elijah brought up that he was going to move, you just—”

“I got scared.”

“At what part?”

All of it. Every last bit of it. The kiss, the diner, the moving.

“Gavin. Please talk to me.”

It’s all written in his journal, tucked away with twenty pages on the fear he feels towards every day of his life, the fear he has for the next few years of his life. Killing people is not fixing him. It is a temporary relief and it will stay that way. Gavin has the words to say what he needs to, but putting them in order, shoving them out of his mouth individually? That’s one of his fears, too.

“I don’t know what to say,” he tries instead. “I’m tired, Connor, can I please—”

“No,” he says. “No. You’re going to talk to me.”

“Connor—”

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

He bites his tongue to keep his jaw from trembling. He turns away from Connor so he doesn’t have to look at him. He curls his hands into fists so they don’t feel so useless resting at his sides and then he forces them to flatten out again against his legs so he doesn’t feel so violent for just standing here.

“I’m—” he sighs. “Worried.”

“About?”

“Everything,” he whispers. “You. And Eli.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Gavin—”

“If Eli moves back here and we fight again it’s all going to feel so fucking worthless,” he says. “And he saw what happened to me and I can feel him being careful around me like I’m made of fucking glass and I’m not but I see him start to make a joke and he pauses to rethink it like a hundred times over to make sure it’s not going to make me upset and I know he was happy in New York and I don’t know if I believe him that he’s moving here because of any other reason than me and I just—”

He pauses and takes a breath, his lungs struggling to keep up and it’s not even that he spoke a lot it’s just like the words have pulled it all from him and when he turns back to Connor, Connor is standing a few feet away, reaching out to him and he stumbles back away from his hands.

“When this is all done with, it’s just going to be me and him and you don’t know how bad we can be towards each other sometimes and you don’t really understand what it was like before. But we were cruel and it feels like we’re not even apologizing for what happened before, we’re just pretending it didn’t because something worse happened to me.”

_ “Gavin—” _

“He told me I wasn’t good enough. Before. And all my life I knew it but he kicked me out of our stupid band and he told me I wasn’t good enough. And then the band fell apart and it was like it didn’t even matter to begin with but everyone just gave up. We all just gave up,” he continues. “And when we were in college I—I was still mad at him and he was engaged to this guy, you know? Elie was going to get married and—and I told him that Eli was cheating on him when he wasn’t because I wanted to break the two of them up. I was really mad and I didn’t want Eli to be happy and so I… I lied to his fiance and I…”

“Stop,” Connor says quietly. “Stop talking.”

“I’m not a good person,” Gavin whispers. “I fucked my brother’s fiance because he kicked me out of a shitty high school band and I’ve killed people and I let them hurt me and I don’t even care enough to apologize for it. I let Elijah hate me for ten years because I didn’t want to tell him I was sorry. I’m not a good person and you…  _ you _ said I was good, before, and you want to protect me, but how long is that going to last? Until Eddie’s dead?”

“Gavin,” he says again, reaching out to him. And Gavin doesn’t let him touch him this time. He doesn’t want Connor to touch him, because if Connor touches him he will give up on all these thoughts because Connor is good and feels safe and feels like home and it is too easy to forget all of the awful things when Connor is looking at him like that or when Connor is holding his hand. “I told you I was here for you. And none of that matters. It’s been ten years. You were an idiot teenager.”

“You can’t use the idiot teenager excuse,” Gavin replies.

“Why not?” he asks. “He’s your brother. You don’t think after ten years he might actually want to forgive you for that?”

“Why would he? I destroyed his life. And brushing it off as stupid teenage antics it’s—”

“You didn’t destroy his life.”

“No?” he asks. “Then why is he moving back to Detroit? Why didn’t he tell me he was going to move back? Why didn’t he even tell me he was moving to New York in the first place? He’s never… he never tried to talk to me. In the last ten years there’s been nothing. And you—”

“Me?”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“W-What?”

“After Eddie is dead, we don’t have any reason to talk. I’ll move out. We won’t see each other again. There’s no point.”

“There is a point,” Connor says, and he steps closer and Gavin steps backward, trying to keep them two yards apart. Trying his best to make sure that Connor doesn’t get any closer than that. “Gavin, you know I like you and I know you like me.”

“I don’t like you,” he says, and it is technically true, if he's a piece of shit about it. “The kiss was a mistake. And you love someone else anyway, so what the fuck does it matter?”

“I don’t think you believe that, and when I said I was falling for someone before, I was talking about was  _ you. _ ”

"Me?"

"Yes. You. Why are you looking st me like you don't believe me?"

“Because I don’t know what the fuck I am to you. I know what you are to me. Protector or savior or fuckin’ hitman helper-guardian angel bullshit, I know what you are to me. I don’t know what I am to you. I’m just… a charity case, yeah? I knew your brother and you thought it would be good for me to stick around?”

“No.”

“You felt guilty about what happened to me.”

“Gavin—”

“Tell me what I am to you. Not what I mean or how you feel towards me, but what I  _ am.” _

“You’re Gavin,” he says, and Gavin looks away, a laugh caught in his throat. “You’re a dense idiot that’s become my friend. You’re the person that keeps me up at night because when you write in your journal you write like you’re possessed and I like it. I like listening to the sound of you getting everything out, even if I wish you were talking to me. And you’re the jerk that stole my first kiss in the middle of the night when I least expected it.”

“But—”

“You’re my friend, Gavin,” Connor says. “I didn’t get attached to you because you knew my brother or you said his name. I got attached to you because of who you are. I felt guilty, yes—I felt like it was my fault somehow and I wanted to help, but that’s not the reason I agreed to helping you with this. There is something so… frustrating and aggravating about  _ you.” _

“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.”

“It’s not,” Connor says. “You’re awful. But not in the ways you think you are.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re awful because you make me love you. And I’m not supposed to fall in love and I was trained not to fall in love and it didn’t matter because there’s  _ you.” _

“You told me you were in love before, don’t try and make me feel like I’m special, Connor,” Gavin says. “I know I’m not.”

“You are,” Connor whispers, taking a step closer to him. Gavin doesn’t move. He stays where he is, even though there is at least five more steps he could take backward until he hit the wall. He lets Connor take another. And another. “You are the only person that has ever made me consider stopping all of this and leaving the ICA. Do you know that?”

“Jesus,” Gavin whispers. “You really are falling in love with me.”

Connor laughs, but it is twinged with the sadness on his face and he nods, “I don’t want to leave you, Gavin. I want to stay. I want you to annoy me for the rest of my life.”

“Stop,” he whispers back. “You can’t say shit like that.”

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I don’t want the kiss last night to be a mistake, Gavin. I want you. And I really… I really want you to let me kiss you right now.”

“No,” he says. “I—I can’t do this. With you.”

It is too difficult. It’s too difficult hearing Connor say these things and so clearly mean it and for him to say so much and still know that they wouldn’t work. Gavin fell apart and he is missing his pieces and he is not quite put back together and he will never be put back together. There will always be a part of him that is missing. Connor and North were wrong when they tried to make him think he survived something, because he is constantly, repeatedly, reminded of how much of a victim he still is.

It’s not even Niles. Not anymore. It’s just him. It’s just Gavin getting in the way of himself.

He is not allowed to be happy, and he is not allowed to love someone that is like Connor. He’s a hitman. He will leave, constantly, to kill people. And Gavin will never be able to ignore that his business trips will result in at least one dead body wherever he goes. He will never be able to lay down on a bed at night and think about their love story without thinking about how it started and he will never be able to have kids or a husband or a house because he will only ever be a victim thinking about how the world has a video of him being assaulted and they are getting off on it and laughing at his pain.

The thing is—

He is chasing a normal life. With a dog and three cats and four children. He is chasing the dream of a husband who helps him put up a stupid white picket fence and helps him pick out a house with too many bedrooms that they can fill with stupid things until they adopt the babies that will become the little monsters that run around and break things. He wants the holidays that he can cook a hundred dishes for and he wants the stupid things like the pie sitting on window sills and the smell of a spring breeze fluttering in and the laundry hanging out back and the swing set that he builds himself and passing a football or a baseball or something stupid in the backyard and he wants the treehouse and the parent-teacher meetings and he wants to renew his wedding vows and he wants everything he wants the stupid normal life. He wants everything and he has let the time pass and he has denied himself it because he never thought he deserved it or that he could have it until now when it has been proven to him that he will never get it again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, pulling away from Connor. “I can’t. I’m sorry. This isn't going to happen.  _ We  _ are not going to happen.”

“Gavin—”

They will always be killers. Gavin will always be broken. This is not a love story.

“I’m tired,” he says quietly through his tears. “Please let me go to sleep.”

Connor nods, and he doesn’t say anything else when Gavin moves past him to get ready to sleep. Not just a nap like he wanted before. But sleep for as long as he possibly can so he can put this off again for as long as he can manage.

  
  


**September 24th ** | 5:47 P.M.

He won’t cry when Elijah gets back, but Connor can allow himself to cry in the silence beforehand, when Gavin has finally fallen asleep and he can hide himself away in the bathroom like he used to do when he was a kid. They would get punished if they cried. He can still feel the leather belt hitting his back, trying to beat the emotions out of him. It doesn’t work that way. And he has had the time to unlearn hurting himself as punishment for feeling, and instead he sinks to the ground and he cries.

He cries for the first time since Gavin got here, and it comes out in big sobs that he keeps quieted against his hand, because he has had practice with that, too. Making everything as quiet as possible. Making sure that no matter what, people couldn’t hear him. It hurts. Keeping quiet makes it hurt, like the sobs have turned into broken glass in his ribcage and every time he breathes in they are cutting up his insides, dessacating precious tissue and organs needed to survive.

But he keeps it held in and he keeps it quiet and when he finally manages to stop crying and brush the tears away, his head feels like it is filled with fog. Like everything inside of it is wound too tight and it will all break and snap if he tries to function. But he forces himself to move past the pain of his migraine and he sits at the counter in the kitchen, pretending to work. Pretending to read over the selected contracts that Hank has sent to him. Ones available in Detroit. He could pick all of them. He wants to. Not for the money or for the job, but to escape. To have a distraction from his life right now.

Three people in this city have been targeted to be killed.

He looks over to the bed where Gavin sleeps. Actually, truly, sound asleep. He thinks Gavin managed to fully exhaust himself from the tears. He doesn’t think Gavin slept last night, either. But he’s asleep, and he tries to make that the only thing he cares about, but it’s not. Because Connor wants more. He wants to be able to lay next to him and hold him and let him know he’s safe here. That he can rest without worry.

And he can’t.

Connor made Gavin cry by forcing him to talk, and he made Gavin upset by kissing him and he keeps ruining everything. And it hurts. It hurts because Connor wants him and he hasn’t ever felt like this. He fell in love once before, but it was nothing like this. And that relationship was doomed from the start, too, but it wasn’t as if they were ever going to be together, and Connor knew that.

It feels too—

It feels too  _ possible _ with Gavin. It feels like he has already gotten too much that he shouldn’t have.

  
  


**September 24th ** | 6:47 P.M.

There’s a soft knock at the door, pulling Connor away from his work to answer it, Elijah waiting on the other side.

“Gavin’s asleep,” he says quietly. “How did apartment hunting go?”

“He’s asleep?” Elijah asks, taking a few steps inside like he needs to see Gavin to believe it. “I—It went well. I found a place. Do you want to go on a walk? We can get dinner? Bring something back for Vin?"

  
  


**September 24th ** | 7:07 P.M.

“It’s early for Gavin to be sleeping already,” Elijah says, walking down the sidewalk with him. The restaurant they’ve decided on isn’t far, just far enough for their walk to be filled with uncomfortable small talk about apartments until they reach it. “Is he okay?”

“He didn’t sleep much last night, that’s all.”

“Then why do you look like you’ve been crying for the last hour?”

Connor sighs and shrugs, “I don’t know. The weather?”

“Connor,” Elijah comes to a halt. “Is something wrong between you two?”

“No,” he says. “He’s just very… closed off. He doesn’t talk to me. And there’s only so much space I can give him before it feels like I’m not trying or I don’t care. And before it was… it was like I was giving him space. Not it’s not. Now I’m being shut out and pushed away.”

“Did I say something at the diner to make him upset?”

“No,” Connor replies. “It just… happens. That’s all.”

Elijah nods, stepping away from Connor. Continuing down the street. Connor could tell Elijah the truth. He could tell him that he thinks Elijah did say something a few hours ago when they were together. He could tell him he doesn’t really know what it was, but that he said something that made Gavin upset. He could tell him that Gavin doesn’t think Elijah has ever properly forgiven him. But it’s not his place and he doesn’t want to make things worse.

He really does love Gavin. He is trying desperately to cling onto someone that has no intention of staying, though.

“How long have you two been together?”

“A little over six months,” Connor says. “Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“We met then and he came to stay with me a month or so after that. We didn’t… date until recently,” he says, struggling for a way to make it not be a lie. He prefers half-truths. It makes him not feel so guilty about lying to someone like Elijah. “Why?”

“He came to live with you only knowing you a month?”

“He was scared of going back to his apartment.”

“Oh,” Elijah sighs. “I wish he had called me.”

“He didn’t want anyone to know what happened to him. He thought I didn’t know. Before. Until the video surfaced. He thought I just knew he was attacked. And I didn't say anything because I didn't think I should."

“Does he go anywhere? Support groups or therapy?”

Connor pauses, his hands moving to his pockets. The urge to hide suddenly rising up, “I—No—I didn’t… I didn’t think about it. I have a friend, I think she talked to him about it. But there’s—he won’t even talk to me, what makes you think he’ll talk to someone else?”

He can't tell Elijah that he tried to talk about this before, that Gavin shut him down and refused.

“Solidarity. Confidentiality.”

_ Oh. _

“I’ll ask him about going,” Connor says. “After you go. I don’t want him to get upset before you leave.”

“He’s sleeping at seven in the afternoon, Connor, I think he’s already upset,” Elijah smiles softly. “Look, I think you two seem happy together. Just… look out for him. Until I move here. Then I can be a big brother again.”

“Are you going to give me another speech about not hurting him?”

“No,” Elijah says. “I think you understand the severity of this.”

Connor smiles softly, wishing he could fold in on himself. What is going to happen when he moves and leaves Gavin here? What is Elijah going to think of him then? They get along. They actually get along better than Connor thought they would. It seems like almost a shame that his first relationship would have the promise of another good friendship and yet it’s going to end before it can really start.

“I really do love him, you know?” Connor whispers, more to himself than to Elijah. But the words these last few days have been clawing their way out of him, being spoken whenever they have the chance.

“I know.”

  
  


**September 25th** | 2:12 A.M.

“You still smoke?”

Eli looks up to him, leaning away from the building, turning the cigarette over in his hands. Gavin stays a step away from him than he might normally, as though the scent of cigarettes is going to go away by being an extra foot apart. It reminds him of the others. He has watched movies and walked down streets and been reminded of the smell of cigarettes for the last five months of his life. It’s okay. It isn’t as bad as the first time he passed someone smoking on the street, when he was still alone in his own apartment and he had turned around and walked back, trying to keep himself from shaking.

It helps that it’s Eli holding it. There's a divide. Eli smoking reminds him of all the stupid memories he has of his childhood when they shouldn’t have been smoking but did it to look cool. Starting out with the sticks leftover from suckers, graduating to candy cigarettes, ending with real ones. It balances out, maybe, just barely.

“Yeah. You?”

“No,” Gavin shakes his head. “You should stop, by the way.”

“I know,” he replies. “Sometimes it just... helps. To do something damaging. You know?”

“Yeah,” he nods. He knows more than anything. He is the shining example of being a piece of shit because he hurts. He just usually lashed out at others instead of at himself. It wasn’t until he lost Eli that he started to turn his pain inwards. “Eli?”

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry I slept with your fiance.”

“I’m sorry I told you that our band was shitty and it was your fault.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you and tell you sooner,” Gavin whispers.

“Me too.”

“Can everything be okay between us again?” he asks quietly. “I’d like my brother back, if that's okay with you."

“Yeah,” Eli says, dropping his cigarette to the ground, stomping it out, reaching for him. “Me too.”

He hugs his brother for the first time in ten years. He notices the smell of smoke and cologne on his clothes. Pajamas and an old leather jacket. He doesn’t know how Eli was planning to get back in. Maybe Connor knew and would’ve answered the door. Maybe he wasn’t planning to come back. He doesn’t know. He woke up in the dark and felt alone, like he was dropped in the ocean, and he just knew that Eli was out here. Like when they were kids. Running away to smoke cigarettes. Eli probably put something in the door to keep it that tiny millimeter open to get back in.

But it doesn’t matter. He hugs his brother tight and he is afraid to let go. He’s afraid of tomorrow. He’s afraid of him leaving.

Who the fuck is going to annoy the shit out of him by calling him  _ Vinny  _ when Eli is gone?

But he’s coming back. He’s coming back in a few months. And Gavin isn’t going to lose his brother again. He isn’t going to lose another piece of himself.

"Vinny?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you do me a favor?" He asks, pulling back. "Can you… can you talk to Connor?"

"W-what?"

"He's hurting, Vin. I know you are too, and it's not my place, but your pain affects him, too. Just… let him be there for you. Okay?"

He nods, unsure if this promise is a lie or not.

  
  


**September 25th ** | 3:00 P.M.

“I’m going to miss you, Vinny,” Elijah says, hugging Gavin tight once more. Twice in less than twenty-four hours.

“When you move here, lose my number,” Gavin replies. “I don’t want people thinking I have good sibling relationships, it’ll ruin my street cred.”

“What fuckin’ street cred? The street cred with Connor?” Elijah pulls away, waving toward Connor waiting in the car. “He has more street cred than you.”

Gavin laughs, looking back to him. Last night when he woke up to Connor getting ready for sleep, he was completely aware of how much space was between them. Laying on the far side of the bed. But he felt Connor’s hand reaching out to him, stretching out across the space between them. He should’ve turned around, he should’ve taken the hand. It would’ve been an apology that Connor could accept. It would’ve been better than Gavin just saying he was sorry and laying down to sleep to get away from it all.

But it’s not Gavin. He doesn’t apologize. That was his whole thing before. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to them now. Elijah has been a buffer between them this morning. Getting ready, having breakfast, coming to the airport.

“I’ll see you next month,” Elijah says, pulling him back from his thoughts. “Don’t forget to call me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And… don’t lose him, alright?” Eli says, leaning forward. “Connor really loves you. Don’t let him go.”

“Eli—”

“I know you run when you’re scared, and I know you love him, too. So just… don’t let him go. That’s all. I think he’s good for you, Vin.”

“I won’t,” Gavin replies. “Promise.”

“Good. I have to go. My flight is going to leave without me,” he says. “Good luck, baby brother.”

“’Baby brother’?” Gavin asks. “Go to hell. I hope your flight crashes.  _ Baby brother.  _ Idiot.”

Elijah laughs, one last hug, one last wave, before he takes his bags and leaves. Gavin hesitates for a second, watching until Elijah gets into the building before he gets back in the car. Eli is right. He runs when he loves someone. The only time he didn't was with Niles, but even then, his constant desire to change himself and pretend he wasn't who he was was like he was running, too.

“Connor—”

“We can pretend like it never happened,” he says quietly. “It’s okay.”

“What if I don’t want to pretend?” Gavin asks.

“Okay. We don’t have to.”

  
  


**September 27th ** | 4:56 P.M.

“Him,” Gavin says quietly, turning the computer screen toward Connor. “That’s him.”

Connor doesn’t look at his face for more than a second. He is scanning the information beside it. Past crimes and aliases. Criminal associates and last known addresses, but he won’t be there. Connor can already guess that. The people in Eddie’s gang so far have been able to get around the system using fake IDs and money to hide out in the city away from where the police can find them.

But Connor has better resources than a DPD database. He has Hank and the entire ICA. And yet they still can’t find Eddie.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Do you think he’ll know where Eddie is?”

Gavin shrugs, “Maybe. I don’t know. Why?”

“I think we should’ve been trying to get information out of them,” Connor replies. “We can’t find Eddie anywhere. We should’ve been asking them.”

“Fuck,” Gavin whispers. “Why didn’t you bring this up before?”

“I thought I could find him.”

Gavin stands up, moving away from the counter, “But you gave up?”

“Eddie has a lot of money and resources, Gavin, I’ve been trying my best.”

“Have you?”

“Gavin,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I thought I could find him without having to torture people for the location.”

“Fuck for the location, Connor, they deserve it anyway.”

“I know—”

“There’s only two left until Eddie.”

“I’d like to point out you didn’t think about it before, either.”

Gavin shakes his head, “Yeah but I’m the fucking idiot in this situation, remember? You’re supposed to be the smart one.”

“You’re not an idiot—”

“Shut up,” Gavin whispers. “Just shut up.”

He leaves, walking toward the door and exiting. It slams shut behind him, loud and reverberating around the room. Connor stands there for a moment, the anger quickly shifting away into regret. He should’ve thought about this sooner. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to get emotionally attached to Gavin and thought more about the specifics of these things beyond just asking North for help.

He’s stupid. He made a mistake. Niles wouldn’t have done this. He would’ve been able to get Eddie’s location out of the first one and not worry about it for the last six months.

Connor moves toward the door, grabbing his jacket from the hook and opening it. He needs to find Gavin, to tell him he’s sorry. He stops dead, hand still on the knob, one foot halfway out the door.

“I don’t have a key,” Gavin says quietly, leaning against the wall opposite of him. “Or I would’ve run away by now.”

“I can get you one.”

Gavin shakes his head, “I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to lie all the time, you know,” Connor replies. “You’re allowed to be upset.”

“I know, I’m just fucking sick of it. I’m sick of all this. Always fucking locked in an apartment with nowhere to go and even if I left, I’d be too fucking scared to go anywhere.”

“Stir-crazy?”

“Stir-crazy borderline agoraphobe,” Gavin replies with a small smile. “I’m sorry, Connor. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

Connor steps over to him, letting the door fall closed behind him as he leans against the wall next to Gavin, “I’m sorry, too. I should’ve thought about it sooner.”

“But you’re always thinking about me, huh?” Gavin asks, voice teasing. “Too busy falling in love with me, right?”

He says it like a joke. Like he has every time. Like he cannot fathom someone falling in love with him. Connor has avoided the question before. He has tried his best not to answer it and tried his best not to lie. Just glossed right by like it didn’t carry the weight of the world.

Connor has been in love once, when he was younger, and it ended poorly. And he could do it again. He could laugh, he could say something else. He wants to ask Gavin to go with him somewhere. Like the park or a cafe. Somwhere other than this fucking apartment with nowhere to go. Maybe Gavin would feel safe with him out in the world. Connor feels safe with Gavin. He is the only person to make him feel that way.

“Get your jacket,” Connor says quietly, moving back to the door. “Let’s go get you a key, alright?”

“You sure? You want me to have access to your apartment like that?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. Get your stupid jacket and let’s go.”

  
  


**September 27th ** | 5:31 P.M.

He stands next to Connor as he hands his key over to be copied. The store is large but crowded. The curse of big cities. Gavin used to find it comforting, during a brief time in his life when he felt too lonely and too dangerous to be alone. When he needed the safety of others to ensure that he held himself together. Breaking in front of strangers is not in his list of things he can do. Breaking in front of Connor is already difficult enough, and he has done it more times than he wants to admit to. He doesn’t like showing that side of him. It doesn’t line up with who he’s supposed to be.

He waits, and he feels Connor take his hand, leading him away to browse shelves nearby while they wait. He lets him. He doesn’t pull away. He isn’t so angry when he’s with Connor. He isn’t so angry when Connor is holding his hand or picking up something stupid and making a joke about it that doesn’t quite reach him. Sometimes he wishes he was. Sometimes he’s glad he isn’t.

Gavin wonders sometimes if Connor is ever grateful that this happened to him, letting him end up here in his life. He wonders if Connor is happy that something terrible and awful happened and now they can have this strange relationship where they lie in a hundred different territories, each one foggy and gray and unseen. Gavin isn’t. He likes Connor. He loves him, really. From this point on he would never want to go his life without seeing him, even though he knows the day is fast approaching. But—

He is not grateful that he was raped and he met him. He’s not grateful that Niles broke his heart and ruined him. He would prefer a life without that and without Connor. But he can be grateful that Connor found him. He can be grateful that the only person he’s felt this comfortable about holding hands with in public is the one doing it right now. He can be grateful that Connor is trying his hardest to help him, even if it seems to get neither of them anywhere.

"Con?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm… scared. You know that, right?"

Connor pauses, looking away from the display of keychains, "Yes."

"I do like you. But I won't be good at this. With you."

He watches Connor's face shift as he catches on. The fear is not about the people in the store and it isn't about the key that will sit on the chain with the old one to a motorcycle he abandoned a year ago.

"Gav—"

"Can we go slow?"

"Yeah. Of course," Connor says, handing him a cat keychain. "We can go as slow as you want. What made you change your mind?"

He shrugs, not quite ready to admit that it was all Eli's fault. But it's also this feeling he has right now, having a keychain handed to him and his own key for Connor's apartment. The trust they built between them. It won't last. He knows it won't. Gavin will never have the life he wants but he knows at the very least he does want Connor, and if he can only have him for a little bit longer and he is the only thing he can actually have out of things he does want, he shouldn't keep himself from it.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you," Gavin says quietly, taking the keychain. "I don't… you didn't deserve it."

"I'm sorry, too."

"I…" Gavin trails off, biting his lip. "I like you. I, uh…"

"Gav?"

"I love you, okay?"

_ Don't let him go. _

Gavin is trying his hardest not to.

"I love you, too, Gav."

  
  


**September 30th ** | 7:22 P.M.

They called him Gray. Gavin doesn’t know why. It was in the records under his lists of aliases, but it’s not his real, legal name. Not that he really cares for the quirky origin story of one of his rapist’s nicknames. But Gavin does vaguely remember them referring to someone as  _ Gray  _ when he was in the basement, it just never connected in his head that it was a name. He has a  _ G  _ tattooed on the side of his face. Curling script that makes Gavin’s stomach turns. He knows that font they used. Blackadder. Tina used to like to write stories. Stupid, funny things. Her stories had a charm because she had a charm that brought them to life, and whenever people wrote letters in them, it was the font she chose. Even that’s ruined now.

“Are you ready?” Connor asks.

He is always asking that, and Gavin never really knows how to answer. He’s never ready. Literally face his own demons? Fight them down? It still feels like the first time. It still feels like everything is fresh. But if he tells Connor no, they’ll turn around and go back to the apartment. And he doesn’t want to turn around and go back to the apartment. He wants to kill Gray.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “I’m ready.”

  
  


**September 30th ** | 7:27 P.M.

“If I freeze up—”

“I’ve got your back. Don’t worry.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

  
  


**September 30th ** | 7:54 P.M.

Connor wants to kiss him. He wants to tell him that it’s okay. Do something to help ease this pain, the nerves. But Gavin doesn’t linger by him for very long. He shut down the moment Connor told him he had the address. There was no more small moments of affection. There was no leaning into each other’s space when they were cooking. They’ve been struggling to figure out how to be together. They’ve shared the bed the last few nights, but the night before Gavin slept on the edge of the bed, away from his hands, and when Connor woke up in the morning, Gavin was on the couch.

He wants to hold his hand, but Gavin is already exiting the car, moving toward the house shrouded in the dark light of the street. He wants to chase after him, root him to the spot and tell him that this isn’t helping. This isn’t doing anything to ease the pain inside of his chest, but he knows that isn’t the point. The deaths of these people have nothing to do with Gavin finding any semblance of peace in his life.

So he doesn’t do anything. He just follows idly behind Gavin on the way up to the house. The sounds of a television playing loudly filters out through the open window, the clanking of dishes accompanying it. Gavin moves up to the back door, left open for the fresh air to filter in and clear the house of the smell of cigarettes plaguing it. Or maybe the smoke for whatever left the charred remains on the stovetop.

They move quietly through the house, along the side of a wall that juts outward, creating a narrow pathway to the next room, concealing them for Gray’s line of sight. Closer and closer to the living room until they part ways. Gavin hiding behind one of the walls, pressed up against it and peering out toward Connor as he crouches down behind the sofa. They wait. The minutes ticking by until the dishes stop, the sound of water draining muffled by the yelling of a crowd as the football game drones on.

They wait.

They wait.

They wait.

Connor hears his footsteps, watches his shadow as it moves, listens to the sound of a body sitting down on the couch behind him. He is slow and careful when he stands up, the needle in his hand. Normally, he might’ve just taken something and strangled him, but they don’t know where Eddie is. They need him for information. They need to torture it out of him.

The needle slides into his neck easily, and he is out moments later. Gavin comes to his side, helping Connor move him into one of the dining room chairs. Gavin’s bag resting on the floor between them as they bind him to it. He isn’t freezing like he is always scared of doing again. He is searching for weapons. He is looking for the things to hurt Gray with that they packed.

“Gavin?”

“What?”

“If he doesn’t know where Eddie is, we’ll keep looking. We won’t give up.”

“He knows,” Gavin replies, standing up. “And we aren’t leaving until he tells us.”

  
  


**September 30th ** | 8:18 P.M.

“Good. You’re awake.”

“Took you long enough,” Gray replies. “Been waiting for this.”

“For me?” Gavin asks.

Connor steps away, looking to the windows. He closed them a few minutes ago. Locked each one, pulled the curtains shut tight.

“Yeah, you know when your buddies start dying off one by one it’s not difficult to connect the dots,” he says.

“Did you want me to wait? Make it so you thought you might be safe before I came for you?”

“No. Go ahead. Kill me. Get it over with. You’ll feel so much better, won’t you, baby?”

When Connor glances back, Gavin is turning the hammer over in his hand, like he is testing the weight of it. Then he steps forward, connecting the metal against Gray’s kneecap.

“This is how it’s going to go,” Gavin says, leaning toward him. “You’re going to tell me where Eddie is, or you’re never going to walk again.”

“Feel all brave and powerful now?” Gray asks. “Killed a few people and think you’re a strong, big boy? You weren’t such a strong man when you were crying. Always crying, like a little baby—”

The hammer switches hands, a punch landing against his face. Loud. Hard. Hard enough that Trager is struggling to breathe for a moment. Gavin is strong. Connor has seen it. Early morning pushup routines and lifting boxes of things with ease. The tiny things from their life in the apartment together translating into something else, now.

And it takes a lot of strength to stab someone twenty-eight times. To hit them repeatedly with a golf club without giving up. Gray won’t admit it but—

Gavin is strong, and not just physically. Connor has seen what he has had to endure and he’s still here, fighting for air despite it drowning him.

  
  


**September 30th ** | 8:39 P.M.

It continues. Connor listens, tries to tune it out. He doesn’t watch Gavin torture Gray. He isn’t here to stop him. He is here to help Gavin if he freezes. Gray keeps trying to sputter out names and words to get Gavin to stop, and Gavin isn’t listening. It doesn’t matter. It isn’t Eddie’s location, so who cares? But then everything comes to a halt.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re a fucking hypocrite,” Gray says, nodding his head toward Connor. “You want me dead and not him? How good is he in bed to make you forget?”

_ Nines. Nines. Nines. _

Connor turns around fast, moving toward Gavin quickly, reaching out for him but he is too slow.

The words come out of Gray’s mouth anyway. Things he didn’t want Gavin to know. Things he was trying to keep from him. The only reason he was ever there, in the basement. The only reason he took the mission to begin with—

“Nines was one of us once, you know? You’re working with the enemy.”

Gavin looks toward Connor, his mouth falling open slightly, the search for words running fast across his expression, “Is that true?”

“It’s not what it sounds like,” Connor replies quietly. “I can explain it to you later. Right now, it doesn’t change anything.”

“Bullshit it doesn’t change anything,” Gavin steps forward, his grip on the hammer tight. Connor knows he wouldn’t use it against him, but he takes a step back anyway. It’s a reaction he doesn’t mean. Gavin sees it, his head shakes, the hammer dropping to the floor. “Fuck you.”

“Gavin—”

“I said  _ fuck you,  _ Connor,” he says. “Leave me alone. Just leave me the fuck alone.”

  
  


**September 30th ** | 8:42 P.M.

He sits outside, trying to catch his breath. Trying to breathe. He can’t breathe.

_ Niles was one of them. _

Niles was one of them.

A murderer? A torturer? He knew that before. He knew Niles was a hitman. He knew all about it. But this, this—

This is different.

Niles is like Eddie? Like Bagwell? Like Jefferson and Gray? Like all of the people’s whos names he didn’t want to know, that he fought as hard as he could to never learn?

_ Niles was one of them. _

  
  


**September 30th ** | 8:42 P.M.

“Sorry I caused a little lover’s spat,” Gray says, turning his head to spit out the blood in his mouth. “Thought he knew what kind of person he was banging.”

“Shut up,” Connor replies, but he knows it won’t do anything.

“He’s a pretty good lay, isn’t he? Does he like it rough with you? Or does he need you to heal all of his precious wounds?” he laughs. “With how much he liked to fight, I always had the feeling he was getting off on it in someway.”

“You raped him,” Connor says. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You call it rape? Why did he cum so many times then?”

Connor turns, bending over to pick up the hammer. It is two seconds of thought. It is one step forward. Gray screams for the first time. For the first time, it sounds like he is genuinely terrified.

_ Good. _

The hammer connects with his crotch five times, the jeans he wears turning dark and red. If he lives through this, he’ll never be able to hurt someone like he hurt Gavin again. But even Connor knows that isn’t the full truth. He’ll find a way. Rape isn’t about the sex, it’s about the power. He will find a way to humiliate and destroy a person again no matter what.

“Tell me where Eddie is.” Gray is crying, blubbering like the baby he kept calling Gavin. He reaches out, holding onto his face, nails digging into his skin, “Tell me where Eddie is or I’ll break your fucking jaw.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” he says, his voice shaking. “Why should I bother telling you?”

“Gavin’s the one that wants you dead, and he’s gone. You think I give a shit if you live and you go tell the police? Tell them good luck finding a ghost. Tell me where he is and maybe I’ll call the ambulance to save you.”

He’s quiet. The seconds ticking by. Connor leans back, adjusting his grip on the hammer, bringing it up to hit him.

“Wait!” he yells. “Wait.  He’s with Trager.”

“Trager?”

“Yes. In Nevada. They’re both in Nevada,” Gray whispers. “Please let me go.”

“Fat chance,” Connor whispers.

The hammer hits the side of his face hard. Hard enough to hear the crack of the bones beneath it. He looks up at the movement in the other room, the door to the backyard closing again as Gavin steps inside. Gray is breathing heavily, whimpers and words turning into wet noise as he struggles to make a coherent sound.

“You’re back.”

“Yeah,” Gavin says. “He’s still alive?”

Connor nods, watching Gavin circle around the room back to him, “Gav, it’s not like he made it sound. Niles wasn’t—”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Gavin replies, cutting him off and holding out his hand. “Give me the hammer.”

He does, and he takes a step back as Gavin turns it over in his hands. He is watching Gray struggle to stay alive. The blow to the jaw probably won’t kill him, but the blood in his mouth is spilling between his lips which are unable to close properly. He could drown in his own blood if they wait long enough. And Connor wouldn’t blame Gavin if he wanted to watch it happen. He almost suggests it, even, a moment before Gavin swings the hammer again. Connor doesn’t stop him like he had before with Bagwell. If Gavin wants to beat his skull into a bloody pulp, Connor will let him.

But he doesn’t. After the sixth swing he takes a step back and lets the hammer clatter to the floor.

“Let’s go find Trager.”


	8. Assessed

**October 2nd ** | 8:12 A.M.

Gavin hasn’t taken his hands off the necklace. He keeps playing with the chain, keeps running his fingers over the edge of the quarter. He knows Connor is watching him. He’s been watching Gavin since they left Gray’s place. In the car, sitting on the bed, waking up in the morning. Waiting, watching, waiting, watching.

Connor is on the phone with a contact from the ICA. Talking with them about finding Trager. They already have plane tickets bought, their bags half packed. They’ll have the exact address for Trager when they land, all they know now is the city. Just outside of Vegas. Gavin always wanted to go to Vegas when he was younger. He and Chris would all laugh about ending up there as rockstars or ending up accidentally married at the end of their time when they’re on tour.

He misses that. He misses joking about that.

So instead he sits on the couch, his hands tugging on the chain around his neck, his fingers running over the edges of the quarter. Again and again.

_ Keep me safe. Keep him safe. _

  
  


**October 3rd ** | 7:46 P.M.

“Can we talk before we leave tomorrow?” Connor asks.

“About Niles?”

“Among other things.”

“What other things?”

“Things that might make you mad at me.”

He is so tired of being mad. He is so exhausted from the anger. It is leaving him in gulps and gasps, plucked from his body and leaving him formless and shapeless. Mostly, though, Gavin is just tired of being mad at Connor. It has only been a day and he is exhausted from avoiding the conversation about Niles.

“Can I talk without you interrupting me?” Connor asks.

“When have I ever interrupted you?”

Connor smiles softly, sitting down on the coffee table in front of him, leaning a little closer to him, “I don’t want you to hate me, Gavin. I’ve never wanted that. I just wanted to protect you.”

“You wanted to protect Niles.”

“Gavin—”

“You knew he worked for them,” Gavin whispers. “And you think you’re protecting me by not telling me? I was in love with him, Connor. He was the reason I was there. I knew that. I just—”

“It’s not what it sounds like, Gavin,” he says, “Niles wasn’t like them.”

“How the fuck do you know? You haven’t talked to him in six years.”

“Because I know him. He—”

“What? He killed for them?” Gavin asks. “You think it’s fine and he’s not like them because you don’t think he would’ve raped anyone or helped them do that to anyone, but you’re excusing it because all he did was kill some people? He could’ve been killing the people they held captive like they held me. You think I was the first? I don’t think I was even one of the first dozen.”

“I don’t believe he would work with them if he knew. He wouldn’t do that. They would’ve lied to him, they would’ve kept it secret.”

“That’s what you  _ believe,  _ Connor. It’s not the fucking truth. You know it and I know it. You have no idea what he knew. You just knew he worked for them,” Gavin stands up, moving away from him. Needing to run away. Needing to get away from him. And then, he realizes, like an idiot, like a stupid fucking idiot— “That’s why you were there, isn’t it?”

Connor is quiet. Silent in the room as the question fills the empty space, “Yes.”

“It wasn’t a coincidence.”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because—” he sighs. “Because Niles is my brother. Because you loved him. It’s… It’s not fair to make  _ assumptions _ —”

“It is.”

“Gavin—” 

He is there again. So quiet and so fast, standing so close to Gavin and he stumbles backward, angrier this time than he had been last time Connor did this. Last time he tried to make Gavin feel better. He is so tired of Connor comforting him. He is so tired of needing to be comforted.

“Don’t talk to me. Don’t come near me.”

“Gavin—” he steps forward again, and for a moment Gavin wants to let him. Connor is supposed to be his guardian angel, his stupid fucking safe space and now when he looks at him he sees the cracks and the reflections of Niles in his face. Lies and manipulation and betrayal.

“Connor, I swear—” he lets out an angry breath, pushing Connor backward. “Don’t. Please. I just want to be alone.”

Connor presses his lips together, nodding, “Okay. I’ll go.”

  
  


**October 3rd ** | 9:29 P.M.

Gavin sits by himself in the apartment. Alone and isolated and regretting it already. He doesn’t know why he expected anything different. He doesn’t know why he lets the anger get the best of him. One moment he can be done with it, it can be locked away never to be touched again and then it comes back fast, like whiplash, the anger enough to make him want to break something. He always wants to break something when he’s pissed off and it’s like the rage can’t be solved until there are the shattered remains of something, no matter how guilty he feels after.

And he does feel guilty.

He wants Connor back. He wants him here. It’s all Gavin has wanted that hasn’t been related to death. He doesn’t want to place himself in Connor’s shoes. He doesn’t want to think of what he would do if their situations were reversed and it was Elijah that worked for a gang like Eddie’s. It doesn’t matter to him. He is still angry. His entire relationship with Niles already felt wrong and twisted when it ended and now it feels worse. It makes him sick to his stomach.

All of the times that Niles left without explanation, even though Gavin knew he was going to kill someone, he could’ve been helping them. Every time they said Gavin’s name, he has to wonder if they got it from the ID in his wallet or from Niles telling them that Gavin would be a good next victim to take. And was that it, was that how it went? Did Niles sell Gavin to them?

He doesn’t know. He just feels sick and wrong and he feels like there aren’t enough tears in the world to release this pain. There isn’t a scream loud enough or long enough to get rid of this feeling wound up in his chest.

But he misses Connor and he wants him back and he hates that he wants to say it but he does—

_ Understand. _

If it was Elijah—

He would’ve done the same. In a heartbeat. Protecting his brother is all he knows how to do.

Forgiving Connor, moving past this, it doesn’t mean forgiving Niles, and Gavin doesn’t want to forgive Niles yet.

  
  


**October 3rd ** | 10:46 P.M.

“You’re back,” Gavin says from the bed.

“Yeah. Do you want me to leave again?”

“No,” Gavin says quietly. “No, come here.”

He does, climbing into the bed next to him. Gavin lets him pull him closer, like he is trying to make up for pushing him away. “I’m sorry, Gavin. I am. I just… He’s my brother.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I know.”

“Are you still mad at me?”

“Yes,” Gavin whispers. “Not so much now. Give me time.”

“Okay. Can I stay here?”

“Yeah,” Gavin says, and like he is clarifying his yes, he turns against Connor, burrowing his way closer against his chest. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I deserved it.”

“You didn’t,” Gavin whispers. “This is… difficult for me, Connor. I don’t… I don’t know how to do this.”

“This?”

“A relationship, you know? I’m too angry. And I’m scared.”

“I am, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Connor replies quietly, kissing him gently. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Though, it is a surprise. How quickly Gavin was at forgiving him. Connor can see how much he’s trying. How hard it is to keep himself together, to keep himself from falling apart. He knows how easy it is to be angry. He knows how easy it is to not apologize, to be ruthless, to be cruel. Gavin had a right to be angry. It’s the exact reason that Connor didn’t want to tell him to begin with. That he only picked up the case because it was his only thread to what Niles’ life was like once he abandoned Connor.

He is not hunting Niles because the ICA wants him back. He is just trying to find his brother again, and he stopped looking for him when he found Gavin. It wasn’t that Gavin was more important, it was just that—

Something made him realize that he might never get his brother back, even if he does find Niles.

“Thank you for coming back.”

Connor smiles softly, leaning forward and pressing a gentle kiss against the top of Gavin’s head, “It is my place.”

“No,” Gavin says quietly. “Not here. Before. You came back for me before. You didn’t have to. You could’ve left me.”

_ Right.  _ Months and months ago. He didn’t think about it. Coming back for Gavin when he was in the hospital, coming back for him when he had a dead body to take care of. He always comes back. He will always come back.

“I’d do it again.”

“God,” Gavin sniffles. “You’re so fucking ridiculous. You really are falling in love with me.”

Not a question this time, even though his words are laced with disbelief. Connor is half tempted to say no. He isn’t falling anymore. He’s already there. He already loves Gavin. He has loved him for a while now. He’s already told Gavin this. He’s already told him he loves him. But he tells him again. And again. And again. He whispers the words against Gavin’s lips until he thinks Gavin will finally believe them.

Maybe not even just believe them, but feel deserving of them.

  
  


**October 3rd ** | 10:52 P.M.

Connor makes him so happy. Even if Gavin isn’t a happy person. Being with Connor doesn’t make him regain part of who he was before all of this—being with Connor makes him become someone newer, someone who might still be broken but is pulling himself back together again. And if Gavin allowed himself to be as cheesy as he used to be, maybe he would relate the fragments of who he is to the practice of putting broken pottery back together with gold. The broken thing worth more now. Connor is his gold.

It has been a long time since he’s kissed someone. It’s been an even longer time since he has felt someone hold him like this. He is usually kissed with a need for something else, for sex or for gratification in some way. Connor is kissing him like he just wants to kiss him, just to hold him. The two of them have only kissed like this once before, in the middle of the night, when Elijah was sleeping far too close. Something that has tainted the memory, just a little bit, but this kiss helps reclaim some of that back again.

It’s nice, but he doesn’t think he would care even if Connor was kissing him with the purpose of wanting sex immediately after. Connor is kissing him and that’s all that matters to him. That’s all he wants.

Gavin’s arms move, looping around Connor’s neck, pulling him closer, needing him closer. Needing Connor to be in every bit of his space. Their bodies curve together like they fit perfectly, but Gavin already knew that, too, from nights on the couch, from nights with Connor hugging him.

He feels the weight of the necklace hanging around him, how they are close enough for it to be pressed against Connor’s skin where it used to be. He is forgetting to breathe. He is going to suffocate like this.

Connor breaks away, turning his face slightly to the side, still leaning close, still holding him tightly, a soft exhale. He’s not even out of breath. Lung capacity of an Olympic swimmer. Or a hitman. He doesn’t know. Gavin is just willing himself to catch his own breath before he kisses Connor again, because he knows he will, and he knows he wants to immediately.

“Gavin,” Connor says, voice quiet. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were falling in love with me, too.”

“Shut up,” he murmurs. “I hate you.”

“You love me.”

“Shut up,” Gavin repeats, but Connor is kissing him, silencing whatever else he has to say, and he hopes this time it doesn’t stop.

Connor kisses him like this is their last chance. He kisses Gavin in a way that makes the desire inside of him spark new again, like he could actually have sex and it wouldn’t be tainted by all of the things they did to him before. His hands are moving automatically, searching for it, tugging on Connor’s clothing, shifting up underneath his shirt, feeling his skin.

So close.

He is so close to Connor. He wants him to be closer.

“Gavin—”

“It’s okay,” he says quietly. “I want this. I do.”

“I know,” Connor whispers. “But we were supposed to be moving slow, right?”

“Fuck moving slow.”

“Gavin,” he says, his voice so quiet Gavin can barely hear him. “I’m sorry. It’s me.”

“It’s you?”

“I’m…” he trails off. “I’m not ready.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t think about it that way. It didn’t occur to him. It felt like it was his decision. How selfish of a thought it was, that only his consent right now was in question. He forgot for a moment about their joke. That Connor was a thirty-year-old virgin. He forgot that was true.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says, his hands moving away. “We can just kiss.”

“I’d like that,” Connor replies with a fragile smile.

  
  


**October 4th ** | 9:15 A.M.

“Last night,” Gavin says. “You told me there were multiple things you wanted to tell me that would make me upset. What else was there?”

“Oh—” Connor sighs, packing and repacking his bag again. Not enough space for it all. He needs extra clothes. Extra clothes he can burn so he doesn’t have to bring back evidence from a crime scene. He can’t seem to make them fit. He is focusing too much on them now and he knows he shouldn’t be. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing? Connor—”

“I’m moving to Seattle in February,” he says, the words coming out in a quick rush, so close together that the silence that follows his statement almost feels like maybe Gavin didn’t hear him properly.

But he knows he did. He can see the expression on Gavin’s face. The way it falls, the way he leans back against the wall a little like he needs the support of it. It’s the reason why he didn’t want to tell Gavin. He has kept terrible secrets. He feels guilty for them. But when Gavin kisses him like he did last night, he wants to pretend that he doesn’t have to leave. He wants to pretend that their relationship could survive long distance. He wants to pretend like another big secret like this won’t damage them the same way his secret about Niles had.

But this one is worse. It isn’t about a third party. It’s about them. It’s about the future of the two of them that Connor had stupidly fought for when he knew how big of a mistake it really was.

“You’re moving—”

“To Seattle. Yes.”

“In February.”

“Yes.”

“That’s not  _ nothing,”  _ Gavin says, practically spitting the word out. “W-Why?”

“The ICA doesn’t like us lingering,” Connor says quietly. “We’re only allowed to live in a place for a year or so. I don’t like to push them.”

“Why?”

“Niles worked for the ICA with me once. When he left he violated the contract he had with them. They don’t really trust me,” Connor replies. “It’s not my decision. I don’t want them to be suspicious of me. You… you sort of already put me on thin ice. If they found out about you and they found out I was staying for you, it would complicate things.”

“How complicated? Would they kill one of us?”

“No.”

“Both of us?”

“No, Gavin,” he says with a small smile. “They wouldn’t kill us. But they would probably approach you with offers and NDAs to make sure you don’t talk about anything. They would probably try to give you a job at the ICA to lock you into their contracts.”

“What do their contracts entail?”

Connor sits back, “If you don’t follow their rules and do what they say, you’re… retired.”

“That a fancy word for ‘get killed’?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, so it does end in death. Is there any way for you to leave them without getting killed?”

“Become a ghost like Niles did,” Connor says. “Or fulfill your contract. When the deal is made, you get a little bit of freedom.”

“How much freedom?”

“They come to talk with you every month. Surprise visits. Check-ins to make sure you’re not doing anything. Your place is put under surveillance. Your phone calls listened in on. They watch your financials. If you’re ever involved with the police, you better have proof that it isn’t to expose the company. Marriage isn’t really off the table, but if you do get married, they have to investigate your spouse thoroughly and if there isn’t anything suspicious, then they’re subjected to the same treatment. Or they’re killed if they are suspicious. Children are a little more complicated. They don’t have a way to trust your aren’t telling them your secrets, but then again, who would tell their five-year-old they used to be a hitman?”

“Connor?”

“Yes?”

“Why would you agree to all of that?” Gavin asks. “To working with the ICA to begin with?”

“I didn’t have anything else,” he says quietly. “I had nowhere to go. And Niles wanted to work for the ICA, and he was all I had. So I followed him.”

“You threw your life away for him.”

“I didn’t see it that way at the time,” Connor says. “I didn’t think there was ever going to be someone in my life that I could care for like I care about you.”

“And now you’re moving.”

“Yes.”

“To Seattle.”

“Yes.”

“In February,” Gavin says quietly. “What about us? What’s… what’s going to happen to us?”

“I can visit. As often as possible. I can… call you. Email. Text. Whatever. Anything. Everything.”

“But you won’t be  _ here _ .”

“No,” Connor says. “I won’t. But I’ll try to be. You’re mad at me again, aren’t you?”

“You keep secrets from me and then get pissed because I don’t talk to you, so yeah, I’m a little mad that you’re so hypocritical,” Gavin says with a shrug. “But—but what am I supposed to do? Move with you? Stay? It’s too—It’s too fucking soon and it’s too fucking late.”

He’s right—

Gavin is right. It’s too soon for Connor to leave. Their relationship doesn’t have a name, there is no label to whatever it is that they are. They won’t sustain this when Connor leaves. They were built in close quarters, they will fall apart when there is distance between them. But it’s too late, too. Connor already loves him. He won’t give up that easily. It will just hurt tenfold if anything were to happen.

But Connor was already under the impression that Gavin would move out when this was over. That the distance of two different homes would be good for them. He just hates that they will be so far apart.

“Elijah is moving here next month,” Connor says quietly. “You should stay here with him.”

“And lose you?”

Connor stands up, moving over to him. He is surprised that Gavin seems this angry and still lets Connor touch him, “You won’t lose me. I’ll still be there for you.”

“Not physically.”

“I will visit as much as I can.”

“And when will you move back to Detroit? When are you going to fulfill your shitty contract?”

“They make us wait ten years before we return to a city,” Connor says quietly. It is the reason he chose Seattle out of his options when he could leave. It is already set in stone. The ICA handpicks acceptable apartments for them and keeps them held like precious metals.

It’s funny, though—

His other option was New York. If he had gone there, if Elijah wasn’t moving, their paths could have crossed. It would’ve been a great excuse for Connor to see Gavin, but he doesn’t have that. He already chose Seattle. Elijah is already moving back to Detroit. Like ships in the night.

“Connor? Your contract?”

“It expires when I’m fifty.”

“Fifty—” Gavin lets out a breath, a choked sigh. “Fifty? You’re thirty-three, Connor.”

“I know.”

“I can’t… I can’t wait seventeen years to have you.”

“I know. But we can figure it out, okay?”

“Can we?”

“I will not lose you,” Connor says, choosing his words carefully. This is not a question anymore. This is not a matter of wanting. This is a matter of what Connor will do to keep him. He will not let Gavin go. He will not let seventeen years or ten years or his entire life pass by without Gavin. “You have me. Forever. I promise.”

“Stop making promises you can’t keep,” Gavin whispers. “You’re leaving. You are already breaking it.”

“I’m not leaving you. I’ll come back.” Connor whispers. “I don’t want to lose you. I just want to try. Can we try?”

Gavin nods, and he leans away from the walls, resting his head against Connor’s shoulder. The arms around his waist pull him closer and he feels guilty. He feels guilty for trying to talk Gavin into this. For practically manipulating him into this. He should’ve said something sooner. He should’ve told Gavin he was moving before they ever felt this way toward each other. It would’ve protected them. It would’ve prepared them.

But he still has a few months before he goes. He can help Gavin get his own place, if that’s what he wants. And Connor can make excuses with the ICA. He can take jobs nearby Detroit and drive to visit him every chance he gets. He’ll visit every weekend if that’s what it takes. He can live on a plane. He can stay up late and let his phone die because he talks to Gavin for too long.

He will not lose him. He refuses to.

“I’m sorry, Gavin,” he whispers. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think… I didn’t think.”

He didn’t think he would ever care for him this much. He didn’t think Gavin would ever amount to this much to him.

“I’m so sorry.”

  
  


**October 4th ** | 11:02 A.M.

Gavin sits in the window seat, looking out at the world below as they climb upwards into the sky. It makes his head hurt. It always makes him feel sick, watching the grass turn into fields and the buildings turn into cities and everything turn into clouds. A haze of white and blue up here, too bright and too distant. He’s never liked planes. He doesn’t know why. He can’t remember ever being on one. Just the thought of them scares him.

“Gav?” He turns away, his hand pulling away from his necklace to take Connor’s hand, held out on the armrest between them, “You okay?”

“Don’t like heights very much.”

“I don’t either.”

Gavin leans against his shoulder, pressing his face against the skin of his neck. Strawberry and linens. Not a hitman, not when they’re like this. It is so easy to forget. And he has felt—

Strange. Cracked, but in a good way. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. There is this feeling of uneasiness behind everything he does but today he feels good. He feels happy. He feels broken, too. Like the worst possible things have all finally come true, so there’s no reason to hold it all back anymore. There’s a video of him online being raped by three men and nobody cares. They find it hot. His brother saw it. Connor saw others. He’s been tortured and assaulted. He has lost his friends for good, he thinks. And Connor is leaving in February. They probably won’t last a month, being so far apart. Gavin is too dependent on him. He thinks Connor is a little dependent of him, too, but that feels stupid. Connor is a hitman.

Connor is a hitman that is afraid of heights.

And there is nothing left to lose, either. This plane could crash and it wouldn’t mean anything. Not really.

How cruel, Gavin thinks quietly to himself, that he is forgetting how much it would hurt Eli, how much it would hurt Tina or Chris if/when they find out he died, too, and they never made proper amends.

How cruel of him to think of death so casually.

“You said once,” Gavin trails off. “That there’d be… therapists at the ICA who would help. Right?”

“Yes. But we have to get married. They won’t allow it another way I don’t think. It’s proof that I care and trust about you enough to let the ICA trust you, too.”

“Right,” Gavin says quietly. “And… if we got married, you wouldn’t be able to stay, would you?”

It’s a funny idea. He remembers the way Connor said that he wanted forever with Gavin and how quickly he shut it down because he knew it was too soon. But they could do it for show, if they had to. Them being married doesn’t necessarily mean they are ready to be. He can call it just a piece of paper until then.

“No. But they would allow me to visit you more frequently, I think. I wouldn’t have to hide it,” Connor says. “Does this mean you’re going to go? To therapy, I mean?”

Gavin looks away, toward their hands joined on the armrest, and he remembers the days when his biggest concern was when he wasn’t out. When he was dating people and they’d leave the house together fearful of how the strangers on the street would see him or he was around his parents and he had to find ways to steal affection without it being called out as what it was. When the fear that was in his stomach was real and heavy, so much like this dull pain of his.

Gavin said no to Connor before because he is terrified of going. He is terrified of being told that he is unfixable. He is terrified of living like this for the rest of his life, and if he doesn’t go, he can somehow pretend that it will go away by itself. That therapy can always be that last step to save him that he could take. That he wouldn’t truly hit rock bottom until he went and told he isn’t able to saved anymore.

Somehow, in not going, it is allowing himself to believe that someday he might be okay. But going and finding out that he is too messy and too broken to ever be normal again—

He doesn’t want to know that. But it’s a chance he has to take. It’s something he has to risk to keep Connor. Not because it means a marriage that neither of them are ready for, that would only exist in name, but because Gavin needs to be more than this to be worthy of Connor. He will do this for Connor until he can summon enough strength to do it for himself.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah, I want to go.”

  
  


**October 4th ** | 6:02 P.M.

When they land, Connor rents them a car. He finds them a hotel in a city an hour away from the town Trager lives. It’s better this way, even if it means a long wait to get there and a long wait to get back. It’s both better and worse than when they killed Bagwell. Less of a drive, but a longer time to get back home. The plane ride and the fuss of airports and cars.

It’s weird. It never felt like this before. There was something so normal and routine in the actions of buying a few groceries and getting a place to stay. With Gavin here, it feels like it’s wrong. He is bordering on the edge of some strange precipice and he doesn’t know if he’s going to fall or not, and if he does, he doesn’t know what’s on the other side.

“We could just eat out, you know,” Gavin says, turning a tomato over, inspecting it for imperfections. “Hotels have shitty kitchens, you know. Usually, it’s just a fridge. And you’re making me operate in these terrible conditions.”

“It’ll be the pilot test for a new cooking show,” Connor says, taking the tomato from his hand. “If you do well enough, we can make it the new hit series. Guy Fieri can host.”

Gavin laughs, looking up to him, “Yeah? What if I refuse?”

“Refusal isn’t an option,” he says. “You do know I have a gun, right?”

“Are you threatening me?”

“Only if you make me threaten you.”

Gavin is smiling at him. Smiling in a way that makes Connor incredibly—

He doesn’t think there’s a word. He keeps saying _happy_. He thinks this is more than happiness. He thinks this is what he’s been chasing his entire life and could never find. He thinks this is what he’s been denied for the last thirty-three years of his life. A boy like this smiling at him like that.

And then Gavin’s eyes shift from Connor’s face. One split second and his face falls and he’s pulling away from Connor, looking at something behind him. Connor follows his gaze to a man standing by the lettuce and the asparagus, his phone is open, pointed towards them. He’s taking a picture. Or maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s just holding his phone weird. Making he’s taking pictures of the vegetable stands.

But then he sees the way the man reacts, and there’s a few leaps done in just a few seconds:  _ why is he taking a picture of them?  _ Because he recognizes Gavin. It has to be Gavin. It can’t be Connor. Connor is turned away. It has to be gavin. And then— _ how does he recognize Gavin?  _ Because of the video. Because their faces are on wanted posters. Because they knew each other somehow a long time ago.  ** _Because of the video._ **

“Gavin—”

“Hey!” Gavin says, and his voice is shaking but loud. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Gavin,” Connor whispers. It comes out broken, lost as he takes a few steps after him, reaching out to stop him. “Gavin, don’t.”

“N-Nothing,” the stranger says. “I didn’t—”

“Why are you taking my picture?”

“I’m not—”

Gavin brushes Connor off, taking the last few steps forward, swiping the phone from the man’s hand, turning it back to look at it. Connor peers over his shoulder, glancing between the stranger and the screen. A text conversation. A picture of the two of them. A picture of the two of them that would almost be sweet and nice, with the way they’re looking at each other, if it weren’t for the text below it:

_ Look ;) yr new favorite pornstar in the flesh. Can you believe? _

Connor has lightning-quick reflexes. He was taught ever since he was a child to act upon things as fast as possible. It was how it went. Him and his brothers spent years and years training to be who they are, with all varying levels of skills depending on the task. Seven was a great hunter. Nine was a great killer. Eight was fast. He was quick. That was the only thing he had going for him. He was quicker than anyone else. Faster than any other person in the entire group, out of all the children, not just him and his brothers.

But he isn’t fast enough to react when Gavin does, because for some reason, he wasn’t expecting it. And he hates himself for that. He hates that his first thought was that Gavin’s reaction would be like it was when he saw the videos playing at Jefferson’s place and falling to the floor, or like when he was told that the video was online to begin with, and he fell into silence and numbness.

This isn’t what he expected—

The phone tossed onto the floor, cracking into pieces. The cheap case shattering, the screen turning black as Gavin steps forward, a fist thrown and landing against the man’s face. It’s as far as Gavin gets before Connor is beside him, pulling him back.

“Stop, Gavin,” he says quietly, only to him, the words quiet for just him to hear. “You have to stop. You can’t do this.”

“Fuck you,” he says, struggling against Connor’s arms. “Let me go.”

“No,” Connor says, dragging him backward. His strength is likely equal matched to Gavin’s. He doesn’t really know. There’s been no reason to test it, no way to know. He thinks the only reason Gavin is letting him is because Gavin won’t hurt Connor in his need to hurt someone else. “You can’t do this here. You’ll get arrested. You have to stop.”

The man stands up, a hand on his face, doing nothing to stop the flow of blood. He just watches the two of them like they’re both rabid animals and that’s nearly enough reason for Connor to let Gavin go and hit him again. Because that is how it seems to the man. That  _ Gavin  _ is the wrong one in this equation. Not the man taking pictures of a stranger he recognizes from a video where he was assaulted by three different people, put online for the world to see.

“Go to the car,” Connor says quietly, slipping the keys into his hands. “I’ll meet you there.”

It takes a moment before Gavin nods. Connor lets go of him slowly, prepared to grab him again to restrain him if he goes after the stranger again. But he doesn’t. He just turns around and looks at Connor with a truly unreadable expression. So much anger and so completely upset, so much of it, Connor thinks, that is equally given to him for stopping Gavin from doing this. But they can’t risk an all-out brawl in the middle of a grocery store.

Connor turns, watching Gavin leave. Ensuring he’s gone before he looks back to the stranger. He steps over to him, the stranger taking a small step backward against the stand of vegetables behind him.

“Sorry,” he says, leaning down, picking up the phone. “I think it’s best if we act like this didn’t happen.”

“He broke my fucking phone,” he says, snapping it out of Connor’s hand. “He should pay for the damages. And if he didn’t want people to—”

“To what? Take pictures?”

“Yeah,” he says, shrugging. “Shouldn’t have made the fucking video if he was going to be so camera shy in the end.”

There’s this moment, that exists, in a split second. It happened with Elijah. It happened with North and Hank. The question of whether or not it was Connor’s place to say what happened to Gavin. To tell this stranger that it wasn’t Gavin’s choice. That it’s not his fault, that he didn’t have a say in being drugged and held down. That the entire time he was in the basement has broken him.

It is not Connor’s place. But he remembers all the shows he’s watched. Catching snippets of them, when they say these things to the friends of the people involved, to strangers. It doesn’t feel like they should be allowed to tell someone that, regardless of who they are and what they mean to someone.

“Just be lucky he only broke your phone,” Connor says, glancing up to his face. “And maybe your nose. You deserved worse, in my opinion.”

“Fuck you.”

It is not the worst that Connor’s heard in his life. It’s barely anything at all. He turns away and leaves. He wants to punch him, too. He wants to do exactly what Gavin did. But he can’t for the same reason that he told Gavin—they can’t be arrested for fighting here. One punch and a broken phone and no trace of who they are might be fine. Anything else, and it might end up worse. The only thing they have going for them is that the stranger might be too embarrassed to admit what the fight was about to press charges.

But, fucking hell—

Connor really wants to punch him, too, and he really wishes he could say fuck to the consequences, but he can’t risk this. Trager and Eddie. That’s all that’s left. They are almost done.

  
  


**October 4th ** | 6:17 P.M.

One step forward, two steps back.

Connor makes him smile or laugh and this comes back.

It is always going to come back. It’s never going to go away. He is going to be like this forever.

His entire life he is going to be haunted like this. It is so much worse than he imagined.

  
  


**October 4th ** | 7:32 P.M.

Gavin is quiet. On the ride to the hotel, in the hour it takes for Connor to try and figure out what he wants to eat. In the time that they sit on the floor between the beds beside each other. Connor makes small conversation. Picking different things out that he thinks might be safe topics. Trying his best to figure out what he can joke about. Gavin barely eats. Connor can’t blame him, but he urges Gavin to do it anyway.

He stays quiet as they get ready for bed, as they lay down to sleep. Different beds. Connor’s idea. He doesn’t want to force Gavin into doing anything, even if it’s just sharing the same space like they have already done before. The room is dark, save for the soft light in the bathroom, cutting like a sharp blade against the wall. The room is quiet, save for the sounds of people walking down the hallway or standing outside in the parking lot. The normal city life leaking through the walls just like it does in Detroit. The two of them are okay, save for all the damage of the day.

“I’m sorry,” Gavin says quietly, breaking their silence. “That I’m like this.”

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“I do,” he whispers. “I was better. Before. I could’ve… I was happy. I was more. Before all this, I think you would’ve…”

“Liked you?”

“Loved me.”

“I do love you, Gavin.”

“You shouldn’t, though,” he says. “You should just fucking stop.”

“No.”

“No?” Gavin laughs, in that humorless dry way that he has. Connor has heard him laugh more like that than he has for real. “Fuck, Connor. There are better people out there.”

“You are better people.”

“Shut up.”

“Gavin—” Connor sits up, tempted to go to his side. But he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to act. He doesn’t know when to push and he doesn’t know when to stop and he doesn’t know how many of those times when Gavin shoves him away that he should listen or if he should fight more. All he has is words and his feelings and he can never articulate them the way he wants. He can never get it across. “You’re worthy of love, you know? And I—I love you and I’m not going to stop and I’m certainly not going to stop because you think you’re hard to love. You’re not hard to love.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No? Why?”

“Because you’re  _ you,  _ Connor,” he says. “You don’t have to try, do you? You’re just you. You just… you just exist, and it’s easy for people to like you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re kind and you’re funny and you’re cute and it’s not… It’s not difficult for you to be lovable. You don’t have to constantly try and be aware of who you are and what you’re doing and what might hurt you and what might not. You don’t feel like everyone is walking on eggshells around you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I see you.”

“You see me?” Connor stands up, moving to Gavin’s side of the room. “Gavin, do you even know what you’re saying?”

“No,” he whispers. “No. But I  _ know _ you. And I know you’re easy to love and I know I’m—I’m broken and I’m worthless and I know what it’s like when people look at me and they don’t see me, they just see this idiot who can’t keep it together. I’m too angry and I’m too sad and I don’t fucking care anymore. I don’t want to fix it. I just want to be alone. I just want it to end but I don’t want it to—”

Gavin cuts himself off. He is cutting himself off, but Connor can fill in the gaps himself. Gavin wants to die. Connor has known that for a while now. He has seen how Gavin has tormented himself. How he is barely keeping it together. He doesn’t need Gavin to tell him that he wants to kill himself to know that he’s suicidal. That’s the point in a lot of this. Going back to one of the first things Gavin told him.

He doesn’t care if he gets caught. He doesn’t care what happens to him. He just wants the others dead. He didn’t want therapy at first, because he knew how this would end.

But Connor is not going to let that happen. He would rather die a hundred times over. He would rather be hurt and brutalized for an infinite amount of time just to make Gavin happy and safe and alive.

“You are not hard to love,” Connor repeats. “I promise. I’m not here because I’m obligated to, I’m here because I care about you. I’m here because I’ve cared about you since the moment I met you.”

“Because of Niles.”

“No, because of  _ you,  _ Gavin, and if you need me to tell you that every day, I will,” he says. “I will tell you as many times as you want before you believe me.”

“That’s the problem, Connor,” Gavin whispers. “I don’t believe you. And I can’t keep making you tell me.”

Connor leans forward, resting his forehead against Gavin’s. An arm reaches up, snaking around his waist, holding him there, “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you. I see you, Gavin. I see you for you. Not for who you think you are, but for  _ you.  _ Neither of us are perfect, and that’s okay.”

“You’re pretty close to it.”

“I’m not. I can guarantee you that.”

“You’re stronger than me,” Gavin whispers. “You made it through everything you did. You lost a brother. You practically lost two, and you’re still here, you’re still fine.”

“And you will be fine one day, too.”

“You have too much faith in me.”

“I have the right amount of faith in you,” Connor replies. “And I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here. I’m not leaving you.”

“You are. In February.”

“I’ll still be here. I will always be here. I promise I will always be here if you let me.”

“And if I can’t let you?” Gavin asks, the hand in his shirt tightening. “What if I keep pushing you away?”

“I’ll wait for you, until you’re ready.”

“And if I’m never ready?”

“Then I’ll die waiting,” Connor whispers. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

“Can you really keep all these promises, Con?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“You’d really do anything for me?”

Connor nods, “You want me to destroy the world? I will. You want me to get you your own cooking show? I will.”

“What if I just want you to kiss me and lay next to me tonight?”

“I can do that,” Connor says, leaning forward and placing a careful kiss against his lips.

He’s careful, because this is still new. This is still frightening and strange and not something that Connor is used to. He’s comfortable around Gavin. He is more comfortable than he thought he would be, invading his personal space like this. But maybe it’s because Gavin so easily accepts him. Because the arm around his waist pulls him closer and closer, like Connor is his shelter and Gavin needs to be protected from the world.

And Connor is okay with that.

He can protect Gavin from the entire universe if it means keeping him safe and happy. But he can’t protect Gavin from tomorrow. He can’t protect Gavin from himself.

But he will try again and again, as best as he can.

  
  


**October 5th ** | 1:41 P.M.

Trager has a nice house. It’s one story, but it’s still big. A large garage, a nice car parked out front. A mailbox like the Bagwell’s with the name printed on it. Loopy cursive like they had it done at the same place. Maybe they did. Thousands of miles away and they’re still linked together like this. One thing in the long list of things that connect them all together. Mailboxes and Gavin and videotapes.

Second to last.

Almost done.

This was how it was decided:

One of them knocks on the front door. The other slips in through the back unnoticed. Gavin decides to be the one to knock. He thinks his presence will be enough of a surprise that it will give them an edge. Connor is quieter than him, too. He can pick the lock on the back door. He can jimmy a window open. Gavin is loud. He is brash and violent and he wishes he had a hammer again because the sound of bones cracking has become something he is fond of when it isn’t his own being snapped in half.

But he doesn’t have a weapon now. It is just him, hands in his pocket. No blade to keep him company. He left it behind at Connor’s apartment, stained with the blood of his last victim. He wishes he brought it, but he’s saving it. Like he needs it solely and specifically to carve a mark in Eddie’s chest. A final emblem to say he’s done.

The door opens in front of him moments after he rings the bell.

And Trager is on the other side, all smiles. Soft pink lipstick, dull blonde hair, carefully cut in a bob.

“Hello, Gavin.”

  
  


**October 5th ** | 1:42 P.M.

“Do you want to come in?”

Connor is pressed against the wall, hiding, waiting, listening. The two of them are talking like old friends. Or, rather, Trager is. She is carrying on this conversation by herself. All business woman. All carefully constructed. They had anticipated for her to run. Or, Connor had. He’s dealt with hundreds of criminals. He has seen them react to death in every way possible. When he saw her photo, he thought he had her pegged.

But he was wrong, and Gavin is playing along.

Exceptionally well, Connor thinks.

“Do you want some lemonade? I can go get some for you.”

“No,” Gavin says. “I want to know where Eddie is.”

“Oh, I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” Trager says. “He’s very busy, I don’t think he has time for you anymore. I’m sorry, Gavin.”

“He can make time.”

“So you can kill him like everyone else?” she asks with a laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“They’re only dead because they wouldn’t tell me where he was,” Gavin replies. “Just tell me where he is, and you don’t have to be hurt.”

“Threatening me now?” she laughs. “I thought we were friends, Gavin. Do you remember who took care of you?”

Gavin is silent in a way that worries Connor. They can’t let her scream too loud. Connor didn’t check to see if she had neighbors home. They can’t risk being caught. They might not get away. They’ve been lucky so far, but the ICA will question Connor if he calls a cleaner out to this house, and North isn’t going to fly out here to solve his problems. They need the extra time to get away. 

“Don’t touch me,” Gavin whispers.

“Why? You always liked it before. Come on. My room is just down the hall. I’ve missed you.”

“I said don’t fucking touch me.”

“Oh?” she asks, her voice laced with surprise. “Have you finally grown a backbone? Took you long enough. You let all those men touch you, and now look at you. I got all these leftovers and you’re finally worthy of being a man.”

“Fuck you. Tell me where Eddie is or I’ll break your neck.”

“Not very good at the torture thing, are you?” she says, the sound of her heels clicking across the floor. “No wonder they didn’t tell you.”

There is a moment of silence. Quiet as Trager moves across the room.

And then—

“What is that?”

  
  


**October 5th ** | 1:45 P.M.

He didn’t notice it at first. He was too busy watching her. Keeping an eye on every move she made. He is still doing it, careful of where she is walking to, where a gun might be hidden. But she walks past a picture frame sitting on a table by the window, amongst a few others. But there are two that catch his attention.

“What is that?” he asks quietly.

“Oh,” she sighs. “Sonogram. Birth certificate.”

“You had a baby?”

“Oh, god, Gavin, don’t look at me like that,” she laughs. “It’s not yours. Calm down. It’s dead anyway.”

_ Dead. _

She looks so calm. So calculated. So uncaring.

“How?” he asks, trying to look away from it.  _ It’s not yours.  _ But it could’ve been. He never thought about it before. He never—

He never considered that it was a possibility. Every moment with her was in such a drug-induced haze he barely recalls what happened. He just remembers her on top of him. All these different times, so many different times that they blurred together. Nothing distinguishing them from the next. She was always alone. He was always drugged.

“Drowned,” she says with a small smile. “Accident, you know. You shouldn’t leave a baby unattended in the bath, but a single mother gets stressed out so easily.”

“You killed them?”

She shrugs, “Nobody could prove it. Poor woman like me? Who would want to accuse a pillar of the community, anyway?”

He wonders if he’ll ever get past this gut-wrenching feeling. Everything is pulled out from underneath him. Just when things get bad, they always get worse. Worse and worse and worse. And these rare shining moments of clarity, of happiness, that are always decimated into a thousand pieces so fucking easily. Cameras and videos and the nonchalant nature of a baby killer admitting her crime without a care in the world.

Because she doesn’t expect to live or because she doesn’t expect Gavin will take this information to the authorities? Because she doesn’t expect  _ Gavin  _ to get out alive or because she doesn’t expect Gavin to act on anything at all?

“Where is Eddie?” he whispers, falling back on what he knows, what he’s here for.

But his eyes move back to the picture frame. Back to the white wood and the glass carefully holding the sonogram and the certificate.

_ Did Connor know? _

“I’m not going to tell you,” Trager replies, crossing her legs, leaning back. “If you want to torture me,  _ try it.  _ I think we’ve already established you’re pretty bad with threats, and my relationship with Eddie isn’t going to break because of a few broken bones, baby boy.”

He looks back, toward the hallway they walked down, toward the space where he knows Connor is waiting. And then he looks back at her. Cool and calculated. Just like she has always been. She would come to the cell and help take care of his wounds. Pretending at first that she was there to help him, that she didn’t want to be there. And then he woke up, groggy and tired and this faint memory of her slipping him pills.  _ For pain,  _ she had said. And she was by the door, buttoning up a blouse.

And he knew. He always knew. But at least he couldn’t remember the exact details. At least he was allowed to sleep and pretend it wasn’t happening.

“Connor?” he calls softly, looking toward the hallway once more. Needing him here. Needing his help.

Gavin is weak and he is tired and he can’t look at her right now. He is thinking of the baby and he is thinking of the drugs and he’s thinking of how close this is to being over and his anger is at its limit. Unreachable but there, existing underneath the surface.

Trager didn’t run like Connor thought she would. This is not going the way they thought it would. Their plan was stupid and ill-thought. They were supposed to ring the doorbell. She was supposed to turn around. She was supposed to run. Connor was going to stop her. They were going to tie her up. They were going to torture her.

She is sitting in a chair, watching him with the same smile she always had before. He had once thought, briefly, during their first meeting, that she was sweet. That there was a soft undertone to it. That she was helping him. She’s a doctor. She’s supposed to help.

Gavin was wrong.

  
  


**October 5th ** | 1:49 P.M.

“Nines?”

She sounds surprised when Connor steps into the room. She looks different in person. He doesn’t know how to describe the shift. Maybe it is the fear that lights up her face when she sees him.  _ Nines.  _ She thinks she’s looking at Nines. And maybe she is, in the sense that Connor can pretend he is. He can pull on that hitman cover like a shroud. It can take over everything. There can be nothing remaining but the kill.

“She won’t tell me,” Gavin says quietly. “I need to—I need to go. For a minute.”

“Okay,” he says.

He can do that. He can do this without him. It will be easier. He doesn’t want Gavin to see him like this, employing every skill he has ever learned. There has already been too much overlap. He listens to Gavin’s footsteps drift away from him, echoing down the hallway. And he lets himself shift. Every ounce of emotion pouring away like it is just that easy. Like he has buckets of it he can dump into a river, poisoning it forever.

There’s a knife in his pocket, a gun strapped to his leg. Rope in the bag that he sets down on the coffee table between them.

“How difficult are you going to make this?”

“Nines, please—”

“How. Difficult. Are. You. Going. To. Make. This?”

She looks genuinely terrified. Scared in a way that someone hasn’t been from Connor in a while. But she isn’t scared of Connor. She’s scared of  _ Nines _ . Whatever he did for them, it is enough to strike fear into the heart of Trager.

But not Gray. Gray wasn’t scared of him.

_ What did Nines do to  _ ** _her?_ **

“I can’t tell you where Eddie is. You know that. It would get me killed.”

Connor laughs, unzipping the bag, “Not telling me would get you killed also, you know.”

“I don’t know where he is, I promise—”

“I don’t believe your promises. Get up.”

  
  


**October 5th ** | 1:52 P.M.

Gavin finds it quickly. It’s the room between the office and Trager’s bedroom. A little nursery, devoid of almost anything at all. No toys, no decorations. The walls are bare, the crib sits empty in the corner. There’s a changing table, a dresser that he checks for clothes but finds nothing. There is barely any sign that Trager had a baby at all. It looks more like she’s preparing for one. The walls are this dull shade of gray, the carpet a dark blue. It doesn’t even really look like a nursery. It’s just a room that baby once was in. No sign of even society’s pressure to gender a baby with pink walls or blue onesies. Nothing.

But Gavin still wanders through it anyway. Moving from one wall to the next, trailing his hands along the paint. He tries to place a baby in this room, but he can’t. Not even in the crib. It looks like a storage room. It looks like a graveyard. There is this deep unsettling feeling he gets while he lingers in here that it’s the end of the world. The apocalypse is upon them and he’s trying to scavenge in a house and he’s come across a room already picked clean of all the useful things.

Except for the dresser. Except for the changing table and the crib.

Trager had no attachment to the baby at all. She probably keeps this door locked and doesn’t let guests in. She probably only keeps the sonogram and the certificate in the living room to exploit the death of her own child for her own gain. It’s all for show.

She screams from the other room, shattering his silence and the quiet.

He turns away from the nursery, exiting the room fast and moving to the kitchen. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He just can’t go back in there until he has it. Proof that a baby was here? Proof that she had one? Proof that they died?

He opens the cupboards, looking for baby bottles and dishes, but finding nothing. He looks in the fridge and the pantry, trying to find jars of baby food or formula. He is trying to find the only things he can think of that a baby might have, but he doesn’t know anything about children. He’s never held a baby, he’s never taken care of one. He has only seen them from afar when they’re at a store or in public, and the parents are taking care of them, trying to shush their worries and stop their crying.

And now there’s nothing. There is no proof. There’s no toys and no clothes and no food.

How long ago did her baby die? Was it before he was kidnapped? Was it after? Was she telling the truth when she said it wasn’t his?

He didn’t look at the certificate close enough. He doesn’t know the day the baby was born. And does it matter? He doesn’t know why he cares. But he is thinking of Connor. He’s thinking of Connor and nines and the other ten babies were stolen from their mothers and their fathers and taken in by monsters that turned them into monsters.

But Connor isn’t a monster.

If that baby is dead, would it be a blessing? Not to be raised by a monster like Trager? Not to turn into one just like her? Not to twist everything like Gavin was asking for it, like he wanted it? Would her baby have learned to do the same thing?

  
  


**October 5th ** | 1:57 P.M.

“Who was the father?”

Connor pulls away, the pliers in his hand a heavy weight. She isn’t talking. Not even with the three teeth that he’s pulled. It’s not an especially painful thing—it’s the way to do it that’s the torturous part. Making the tooth snap and crack when they’re pulled out. Digging into gums, making the blood and the pain spill for as long as possible. Doing it poorly means doing it right.

But this is a new question, and Trager’s eyes move from Connor’s face to Gavin’s.

“Eddie.”

She’s lying. Connor can tell that, but he doesn’t think Gavin actually wanted real answers. He is just trying to get her to say something. And he doesn’t think Gavin catches the tells that Connor does. The way her face shifts. The way she says the first name she thinks of, the name that has been spun around her head a thousand times in the last ten minutes already.  _ Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. _

“What was their name?”

“I didn’t name it.”

“Because you knew you’d kill them?”

Trager laughs, pitiful and sad, “Yes. I thought I wanted a baby and I was wrong. So I got rid of it.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Who the fuck cares?”

“ _ I _ care,” Gavin screams. “I care. Tell me.”

“Girl. No name. I told them I wanted to think it over.”

“When was she born?”

“Two months ago.”

“When did she die?”

“A week after.”

Gavin steps forward, the knife in his hand catching the light as he moves quickly. Trager’s hands are already tied to the armrests of the chair, spread out so that Connor can do his own part. Ripping off fingernails, jamming toothpicks underneath them. Things that hurt, but things that aren’t hurting _ enough. _

Gavin doesn’t hesitate when he swings the blade down onto them, one of the fingers slicing clean off. Trager screams, twisting in the chair as best as she can against it, but the restraints are tough. They keep her held. There are tears in her eyes, she has been fake-crying for this entire thing. Trager is scared of Nines, but she’s also smart. She is good at play-acting as a victim. But Connor can see through it. The fear, the pain—those are real. But the tears are fake.

“Where did you bury her?”

“Cremated,” she whispers. “Threw the ashes in the trash. What do you want from me, Gavin? What is knowing about her going to do? She’s already dead.”

Gavin lifts the blade up, burying it in her shoulder, “You killed a week-old baby. You don’t think you deserve to be hurt for that?”

“It’s not like she had a life yet. It’s not like I ruined anything.”

“You ruined everything,” Gavin whispers. “Where is Eddie? Tell me before I let him kill you.”

She stares at him. For a long moment, she is silent. Connor doesn’t move. He could. He should. But he doesn’t. He waits with Gavin. He watches their staring contest continue.

And then she opens her mouth and says:

“Chicago.”

“The address?”

“It’s on my phone. Saved under a note titled E.H.”

“And the password for your phone?”

“9689.”

Gavin nods, disappearing from the room. Connor stays beside her, watching the shame cross her features. She looks disgusted with herself. Not because of the baby, not because of Gavin, but because she gave up Eddie’s location. She feels no remorse for Gavin. She feels no remorse for an infant, either. And Connor—

He doesn’t believe either Gavin or the baby girl was the first time she did either of those things. She is experienced in a way that Connor recognizes. Not trained the way he was, but she knows how to do these things and get away with them. Not from the law, but from her own conscience. And when she looks at Connor, when her eyes shift to the picture of the sonogram and the certificate, he follows them. Something is wrong here, and he can’t pick up on it.

“Gavin would make an awful father,” she says quietly. “You understand that, right? Or I might’ve left her on his doorstep instead. But he would be shit at taking care of a kid. He couldn’t even take care of himself. You understand, right?”

Connor takes a step toward her, setting the pliers down on the table next to the other tools, “You’re wrong.”

“Because you don’t  _ know.” _

“What don’t I know?”

“You didn’t see how pathetic he was,” she whispers, leaning forward as best as she can, like she’s telling a secret. “I know you’re not him. I don’t know who you are, but I know you aren’t Nines now.”

“How?” he asks. It feels like when his cover has been seen through when he’s out in the field. The rush of adrenaline as he races to get somewhere else to hide, to change. To be unseen in this world. She sees through it.

She smirks, leaning back, “It’s not the eyes. He wore contacts quite a bit. I remember that. He hated his blue eyes, you know? And you have more restraint than he does. He would never be here with Gavin.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because he never came for Gavin in the first place,” she says. “We told him. We told him we were going to take him and he didn’t try to stop it. Jefferson recorded those videos mostly for himself, but you don’t think Eddie sent them to Nines just to torture him? He never came back for Gavin. He didn’t care.”

  
  


**October 5th ** | 2:05 P.M.

There are certain things that are unforgivable. There are certain things that cannot be forgotten. Nothing in the world can make up for them. Nothing can heal the damage.

Gavin’s aim isn’t the best, but he does manage to get a headshot regardless. Trager’s head flings back with the force of the gunshot, lolling forward after. The trickle of blood tracking down her face. Connor stands up, turning to look at him. Surprised, a little scared. Gavin always scares him, just a little. Connor lied before, when he said that he wasn’t scared of him. There are moments when he is, and one of those moments is now.

He sets the gun down on the table, turning away from Connor, leaving the room without saying anything else.

Twice now.

Twice in a row, these people have destroyed the few good memories Gavin has of Niles.

But it makes sense, doesn’t it?

Niles never did care about him. Why would he? And why would he do anything to help Gavin when he needed it?

There are certain things that are unforgivable. This is one of them now.

Gavin wishes unforgivable things would stop happening to him.

  
  


**October 5th ** | 2:07 P.M.

“Gavin? Gavin, can you stop for a second?”

He does, turning back to face Connor. He looks defeated. Connor hasn’t seen him like this before. He has seen him exhausted and sad and grief-stricken. Angry and hateful and numb. But never  _ defeated.  _ Never with the look on his face like he has given up. Gavin has said a dozen times that he is too tired to care, that he doesn’t want to try anymore, but he still does. He doesn’t give up.

Now he looks like he is.

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Gavin replies. “It’s fine.”

“Gavin—”

“I know you didn’t know,” he says. “So it’s fine. We are fine. I just want to go home. Can you take me home?”

“Yeah,” Connor whispers. “Yeah, of course. Let’s go home.”

  
  
  


**October 5th ** | 5:03 P.M.

“Connor?”

“Yes, Hank?”

“The ICA wants you to come in. They have questions about your finances. They’re doing a thorough investigation about your time in Detroit. And Nevada. Connor? Are you listening to me? They’re reassigning me. I’m not going to be working for you anymore. They don’t trust me. You have to get here as fast as you can, do you understand?”

_ Fuck. _

  
  


**October 5th **| 5:10 P.M.

One step forward, two steps back.

_ No. _

One baby-step forward, a hundred steps back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for the late chapter >.< i got sick around christmas and it totally wiped me out and it's still sort of lingering so my energy has been quite low jdfgkjldlkfg


	9. Lowlight

**October 6th ** | 1:52 A.M.

They sit in silence beside each other on the couch. Their luggage left on the floor by the door, their energy and their emotions drained, but neither willing to move to the bed to sleep. They haven’t spoken in the last few hours. Not much. Connor did his best to try and tell Gavin in the least terrifying words possible that the ICA is onto him.

They don’t have the truth, likely. Hank is the only one that knows the truth, and Connor knows he wouldn’t have told them.

But he doesn’t know what to do.

So they sit in silence, the two of them lacking the words and the energy to speak but too wide awake with the stress to let it take them down. Connor glances over to Gavin, watching him chew on his lip, his eyes focused on his hands, turning them over like he is inspecting them for gunshot residue or blood.

Connor reaches out to him, taking his hands in his, bringing them up to press gentle kisses against the knuckles before leaning into Gavin’s space, curling up against him. Gavin reacts tentatively, not used to being the one that holds, but Connor needs it. He needs someone to hold him together.

In seven hours, he has a meeting with the board members of the ICA. That’s all the information he has been given. A plane ride and a late night of worrying and the two of them laying beside each other in the dark, trying to make sense of their day. 

But maybe that’s a lie. Connor isn’t trying to make sense of the last twenty-four hours, he is trying to make sense of the last seven months. He’s trying to understand what has happened since the day Hank told him there was a case with Niles’ name listed in the notes and he ended up finding Gavin. He is trying to figure out how he has ended up here, in the dark, clinging onto a boy he is devastatingly in love with, when he thought he was unlovable, when he thought he couldn’t love.

“Are you going to tell them the truth?” Gavin asks quietly.

“I don’t know,” he repeats.

The truth could mean anything. The truth could mean everything.

“Do you know what they want?”

“No. I don’t know anything.”

Gavin’s hand tightens on the fabric of his shirt, holding on to him, reassuring him. A quiet  _ I love you  _ passed in the dark. A quiet  _ good luck, good luck, good luck. _

He is going to need it.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 6:02 A.M.

He doesn’t know how to tie a tie, but he loops a black one around Connor’s neck anyway, trying to remember the thing he was taught by his brother the day of his mother’s funeral. Trying to remember how his brother’s hands made the knot and had it rest so perfectly there against his throat like a noose. He is only doing this to have an excuse for one last chance to be close to Connor.

He is terrified.

He is terrified of what is about to happen. He doesn’t even know what to say. There are a thousand things to talk about and nothing is coming to his lips, not even the basic words of telling Connor he loves him, because he doesn’t want to say it like it will be the last time. He doesn’t want to curse this moment but every second of it is laced with the terrifying thought that this will be the last time they ever see each other. The ICA could do that. They could force Connor away. They could kill him. But he tries not to think about it. He is trying not to give into those thoughts because giving into them might jinx them.

So, instead, he kisses Connor and he steps back, knowing that Connor will fix his tie the moment he’s out of the apartment and Gavin won’t see him repair the mess of a knot he’s left there. But that’s okay. Everything will be okay. He has to believe that. He has to hold onto that. Gavin is allowed to break, he is allowed to turn into nothing. Connor can’t. Connor has to keep moving, he has to keep existing, he has to be okay.

He has to be okay because Gavin can’t and he is already all too aware of how his own pain has been wearing Connor down. He looks so much more exhausted than he did the day they met. He looks so much more beaten down than those first few weeks they were together. Gavin is ruining him. Gavin knew he was going to ruin him, and he still selfishly took everything he wanted that he thought he could have.

Connor has to be okay.  _ He  _ ** _has _ ** _ to be _ . So Gavin uses every ounce of hope and belief he has toward it and not the fear for the opposite.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 7:35 A.M.

It’s a long drive, made even longer by the silence. But he gets there. Outside of a building that looks like it’s just a regular business corporation that nobody would know had hitmen and cleaners and evil deeds lurking behind the walls. Or maybe they do. Businesses aren’t known for being run by kind people. Connor parks, following the same steps that he does every time he has a meeting here. It’s different this time. It’s all different now. There is no  _ business as usual  _ today.

This is not usual.

He meets Hank by his office, half an hour before he’ll be called to the meeting room with all the other members of the board, ready to evaluate the poor decisions he’s made in the last six months.

“Hey.”

“Connor,” he says, looking up from the screen to him. “You look well.”

“You don’t have to lie.”

“Fine, you look like shit,” Hank says. “And you have a lot of explaining to do. Are you prepared for that?”

“No,” he says quietly. “But I… have an idea.”

“An idea?”

“Yes.”

“How many lies are involved in this idea of yours?”

“About a dozen. Can you help me?”

Hank sighs, pushing aside a stack of folders, all with Connor’s name printed neatly on them. “I think you should tell them the truth.”

“You think they’d let it all slide then?”

“I think you’d have a better shot not fucking up your entire life if they found it out later on.”

“I have to protect him, Hank.”

“No, you fucking don’t,” he says, standing. “You don’t owe Gavin shit. You don’t have to protect him. You don’t have to do anything but save yourself. And telling them the truth is the best way to do that.”

“I can’t do that to him, Hank. It’s more than that. He isn’t just a boy.”

  
  


**October 6th** | 7:41 A.M.

Gavin lays on the bed, staring up at the ceiling like he has done a hundred times, watching the lights from the television play across the white, making them blue or purple or pink in color as the scenes change. There is too much to think about. There is a baby and there is Niles and there’s Connor and there are a thousand things to consider.

There is North, who he thinks may be a friend to him. He doesn’t know what will happen to the two of them. If she’ll get wrapped up in all of this. If she’ll still talk to him after Connor moves away. Will she move away, too? She’s a cleaner, not a hitman, but does the year-long stay apply to her, too?

And he never met Hank, but he knows what he means to Connor. He doesn’t talk about Hank often, but Gavin knows how to read the subtext of conversations. Hank is important to him, even if he’s been distracted this last year by Gavin and his trauma.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. There is too much to think about. It makes his brain shut off. Go silent and focus on minute, stupid, trivial things. The way the lights change colors above him. The way there are defects and patterns in the ceiling. His worry is overcoming him and his anxiety is pushing everything out but the worst possible things to think about. Things that don’t matter. Things that don’t require his attention. Things that should’ve gone unnoticed.

And if he looks at the pattern in the ceiling above him long enough, he starts to make out other things. The shape of a crescent that reminds of Connor’s smile. The shade of blue during a club sequence on the television looks exactly like the sweater he wore the first time they met. 

Gavin wonders if this is what it feels like to finally break. To be so overcome with grief and worry that nothing else exists except these kinds of thoughts, lingering and hurting even more.

_ Be okay. _

_ Come back. _

_ Be safe. _

_ Come back. _

_ You said you would always come back. _

  
  


**October 6th** | 7:47 A.M.

The ICA building in Detroit is crowded with people. It looks like the same generic business building as anything else in this part of the city. Blending in as a paper company. Various levels of it built to function as such. Connor remembers hearing Gavin tell Elijah that he worked with end of life care, and Connor has to wonder if that would be too on the nose for the ICA to build their front with. Coffins and nurses and things dealing with death that they could brush aside as a funny joke.

It is all too serious now, though.

When he left Hank’s office (now in the basement—moved from the third floor where he used to work, when he was a hacker and a handler for hitmen like Connor, now doing boring paperwork to help with the ICA’s cover story) it wasn’t as busy. Now the halls are lined with people walking to and fro their office spaces, carrying on with business as usual.

Connor waits outside of the meeting room, checking his phone over and over again but finding nothing on it. No texts, no calls, no emails. Everything is lost in this space of not knowing what to do.

The doors behind him open, an assistant stepping out, pretty blonde hair swept back. She reminds him of one of the kids he knew, and it makes everything all the more difficult.

He was fine before Gavin. He had dealt with everything that had happened to him. But then Gavin whispered his brother’s name and all those walls broke down and he has been trying to convince himself that he’s fine, but he knows he isn’t. He is thinking of a pretty blonde girl being shot and he is thinking of the stories and fantasies they would make about running. They don’t even look that similar, but he is remembering all the times he tried to forget from his childhood. The moments that saved him from all the horror twisting into their own little torment.

“Connor? They’re ready for you now.”

He nods, following her inside, leaving the empty halls of this floor behind for the vast emptiness of the room awaiting him.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 8:00 A.M.

Here is the story of what happened:

Connor was hired for a mission to kill a local gang leader that was causing mayhem in the city of Detroit. He had a location, but Eddie wasn’t there. He found Gavin instead. Connor took him to the hospital. They met up afterward. He took Gavin in when he was attacked later, by one of the same people. Connor helped him get his revenge. He fell in love. He fucked up. He killed people, but they were deserving of it and he has Eddie’s location.  _ He can still complete the contract. _

Here is what he can say:

Connor was hired for a mission to kill a local gang leader that was causing mayhem in the city of Detroit. He had a location, but Eddie wasn’t there. Others were. His associates that could lead him to where he was. Using the sole survivor of their attacks, he found a path from one person to the next, leading him up to Trager who told him where Eddie was. Gavin came with him because he needed a witness to help him identify his targets.  _ He can still complete the contract. _

Here is what they want him to say:

Connor was hired for a mission to kill a local gang leader that was causing mayhem in the city of Detroit. He had a location, but Eddie wasn’t there. He didn’t find anyone in the basement, but he found Niles later on, and Niles led him along a path of associates up until where they could get Eddie’s location.  _ He can still complete the contract. _

If he admits to Gavin being there, it is a different situation entirely. Nobody else is supposed to know about the ICA. They aren’t supposed to know the details of the organization that Connor works for. Lying and saying it was Niles that was the other one on the plane, living in his apartment, will save Gavin.

And that’s his only hope, in the end, really—

Convincing them that without a doubt, somehow all of this was working towards finishing a contract he was hired for. If he focuses on that, maybe they’ll believe him. Maybe they will allow him a little bit of leeway to continue to survive.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 9:21 A.M.

It’s a waiting game. It is an awful waiting of time. It passes so slowly, it aches. The answers he doesn’t have waiting out there on the other side. The questions he didn’t know he had to ask.

If Gavin knew that Connor was going to be risking everything by helping him, he wouldn’t have asked. He would’ve done it himself. He would’ve likely killed one of the eight and then been caught, and he wouldn’t have cared. He still doesn’t care. He still finds it difficult to want to live. There was this promise before, that he could have Connor, and it was ripped from him over and over again.

He doesn’t know what’s happening. He just wants this to be over with.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 8:03 A.M.

This is what he tells them:

The truth.

The truth, and all it’s ugly, gory parts.

The truth, and all of the terrifying possibilities they could return it with.

The truth, in the hopes that the board members will see this love he has never had before and believe him when he says it. That it will gain him something that they were denying him before. The truth in the hopes that their trust will remain intact and it won’t shatter with things he didn’t know they knew thrown back in his face.

The truth, just like Hank said.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 8:26 A.M.

_ You used company resources, time and money that could’ve gone to fulfilling a contract, to help a boy? You kept it all secret, you didn’t tell anyone, despite knowing that we could offer assistance? You didn’t want our interference because you knew we would stop you, isn’t that right? Because you knew it was wrong? Because you knew it was something you shouldn’t be doing? Killing these people, while we have no opinion on their deaths, was strictly out of your purview. You went against direct orders having a relationship with a civilian and you killed for them. You risked everything. You risk your life, your job, you risked the sanctity of this company. You told a stranger about the ICA. Do you know what type of punishment that calls for? Do you understand what you’ve done to yourself? To your standing in the ICA? To how the company views you now? Do you understand how you have damaged yourself, your reputation? You were one of the best, Connor. Now you have entered in competition with some of the worst. Congratulations. _

He knows.

He’s sorry.

He grovels and he pleads and he begs and he hopes to be believed.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 8:43 A.M.

“Connor!”

He comes to a reluctant stop, the stress built up inside of him finally letting his legs go weak and he leans back against the wall, no more momentum to carry him any further.

“What do you want, Hank?” he asks quietly.

“I wanted to see how you were.”

“Terrible.”

“Right. So they didn’t take it well?”

“No.”

“What did you say?” Hank asks.

Connor shakes his head, not quite willing to admit it yet. He had a choice in there. To choose Gavin and possibly lose him because he told the truth or to lose himself and Niles if he admitted to knowing where someone they were searching for was. He thought he chose the lesser of two evils, until they presented their little deal.

“How are you?” Connor asks instead. “What’d they say to you? What’s going to happen to you?”

“Nothing. Just desk duty for the next ten years. They won’t let me anywhere near another hitman again. But it’s fine.”

“Everything is okay?”

“Yeah,” Hank replies, leaning against the wall beside him. “Everything is okay.”

“Good,” he whispers. “I’m glad. It was never in my intentions—”

“I know. Don’t worry, kid, okay? It’s better this way. I didn’t want to get reassigned to another hitman anyway.”

“Because I’m your favorite?”

“Yeah,” Hank says. “You’re my favorite. And they can’t stop us from contacting each other. You still have my number.”

“Yeah. Guess I do.”

Hank’s voice lowers as he speaks, “I know you did the right thing. You always do. Don’t beat yourself up too much, okay? Gavin will be alright without you.”

Connor nods. He knows that. He knows Gavin will survive. He knows Gavin will be okay. They both will. They can survive without each other.

But he never wanted to.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 11:32 A.M.

The door is quiet when it opens, but Gavin abandons the bed fast, racing across the room to find Connor by the door, leaning against it the moment it closes back into its place. His face is blank, the keys in his hands still. Not hung up on the hook beside the door along with his jacket like he usually does. He is just standing there, staring at the floor for one long moment, unmoving.

“Connor?”

_ He’s back, he’s back, he’s back— _

Connor looks up, meeting Gavin’s gaze, “They gave me a choice.”

“What kind of choice?”

“You or Niles.”

“What do you mean?”

“They said I could have you, or I could have my brother,” Connor says quietly. “I can turn him in and be with you and… and be released from my contract early or I’ll never see you again, but I can have as much contact with him as I like. They’ll stop looking for him. Niles will be free. They gave me until the end of the month to decide.”

“Connor, what’s the third option?”

“There isn’t one. It’s you or him, Gavin.”

“I’m not going to make you choose between me and him, Connor—”

“They’ll let me go,” Connor says. “They’ll let me leave the ICA. No strings attached. They just want Niles, and I’m free. And I can be with you. I don’t have to move. I don’t have to go anywhere. Effective immediately. Move out, be with you. Start a life. Gavin, it’s  _ perfect _ —”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t?”

“Don’t pick me.”

“But Niles hurt you—”

“I don’t care what he did to me, Con,” he whispers. “You aren’t going to choose me over your brother. You aren’t going to turn him in. I know you aren’t. That isn’t how this is going to work. I’ll go. I’ll be okay.”

“No,” Connor says, his voice hard and angry. “No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to lose you, Gavin.”

“Connor, don’t—”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Then don’t pick the wrong person, Connor.”

“You are not the wrong person,” he says, moving away from the door. “You’re the right one. And I’m not—”

“Don’t,” Gavin whispers. “Don’t… do this. We can survive without each other. You have no idea what the ICA will do to Niles if you turn him in. Keep him alive. Protect him. I’ll be fine. Choose him, Con. Please.”

“Then I only have a month with you. That isn’t enough.”

“I know,” he whispers, letting Connor move closer, an arm wrapping around his waist. Gavin reciprocates, pulling Connor a little closer to him.

“I don’t know why you’re just accepting this,” Connor says, his voice barely audible.

“Just let me do this. I can make this choice for you. It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. We will be okay.”

And it will be better this way. Connor won’t have to be continually destroyed by him. They can go their separate ways. Connor can have his life back. The two of them can survive without each other. They have become far too entangled to see that possibility right now but they will. They’ll have to learn it again. They will have to exist apart from one another.

Gavin isn’t going to make Connor choose between the only two people he really cares about. But Gavin can. He can choose to let Connor have his brother and he can choose to let go of him. He can choose to try and rebuild a life without him. He can do it. He can do it if he tells himself enough times that he can.

  
  


**October 6th ** | 11:41 P.M.

It is an unsaid promise not to talk about the time they have left now. There is something that passes between them when they go through the motions of the rest of the day. Pretending that the end of the month won’t be the end of them. They don’t say it out loud, but they don’t make plans, they don’t talk about it. It is probably not the best thing to do, avoiding the subject, but Connor doesn’t want to think about it. He has never felt so cleanly split into two and he doesn’t want to think about losing Gavin.

So he refuses to.

He refuses to until they get ready for bed and Gavin lays down on the bed and motions for Connor to join him and all he can think about is how once October ends, there will be nobody there anymore. But he lays down beside Gavin anyway, holding onto him a little too tightly, a little too afraid to let go.

Seven months ago he was terrified to leave Gavin alone because he thought Gavin might hurt himself, and that fear hasn’t subsided. But now there’s something else playing with that feeling. Just the terror of never seeing him again. Not because Gavin might take his own life, but because he won’t be allowed to. Connor would rather have Gavin alive and somewhere else, intangible, but still  _ alive,  _ than dead, but he still  _ wants  _ him. He still wants to see him, to touch him, to hold him.

Gavin has made Connor’s choice for him. But Connor can make it himself still, too. He can find Niles. He has to believe that. He just doesn’t know if he could do anything after-the-fact. Gavin is trying to save him like Connor has been trying to save Gavin this entire time, and it has crashed down on the weight of everything.

Once Gavin falls asleep, Connor sneaks away. Silent and careful, pulling away inch by inch until he is sure he can get out of the bed without waking him up. He retreats to the bathroom, closing the door behind him, slinking down to the edge of the bathtub, drawing his knees up.

He is losing Gavin. He will likely never find or see his brother again. Hank is angry with him, angrier than he’s ever been, and North is probably equally upset with him. And he doesn’t blame any of them for it. Gavin should go. It would be better. Connor is leaving for Seattle in a few months and their relationship would’ve been strained and broken by then either way. And Niles—they’re brothers, but that means nothing. He lied and kept things secret from Hank when he could’ve told him more, but instead he allowed the bare minimum to slip through. And North—he used her over and over again to help protect a stranger.

He’s being assigned a new handler as part of the ICA’s punishment. Regardless of which choice he makes, he is losing Hank, too. The trust they had with each other can’t be risked now with the ICA’s suspicion on the both of them.

Connor has been alone for the majority of his life. He has memories of him as a kid, trying his best not to form bonds with the people around him being tormented the same way he was, but he hasn’t spoken with any of them in years. Longer than when he had stopped speaking to Niles. And despite the presence of other people in his lives, he has remained feeling this isolated loneliness that comes with the life of a hitman having to keep his identity a secret.

He wasn’t built for this. They tried to build him for this and he failed. He doesn’t know why he’s still here. Connor doesn’t want to be here. He hasn’t ever wanted to be here but he has been too scared to leave because he knows what they’ll do when they find Niles. They will lock him up for years if they don’t kill him. He has too much information on the ICA to risk leaving out in the world.

It’s part of why he wants to choose Gavin. It wasn’t just because he loves him. It was because of the other half of their offer, too. Letting him go. Letting him have the life he wants. Letting him run away from the ICA for good. They would still check up on him, they would still have those threats ready to go if he did anything remotely suspicious. But he wouldn’t have to kill anymore. He could have a husband. He could have a house. He doesn’t know if he wants those things yet, but he does know he wants a life outside of this. 

“Connor?”

He glances up from the ground, looking to the door. In the dark, he hadn’t noticed it open. He had been too consumed by his thoughts. He hopes the dark will cover up his tears, but his movements to brush them away are automatic, and he has to hope the shadows will shield the motion of his hands because he knows if Gavin sees them, he will know that Connor is crying right now, and he has done his best to protect Gavin from ever seeing this broken side of him.

“You should go back to sleep, Gav.”

“Come with me.”

“No,” he whispers. “I’m fine, okay? I just want to be alone.”

“You’ll have all the time in the world to be alone later,” Gavin says, his shadow moving across the room. He stops in front of Connor, leaning down to him. His hands move in the darkness to find Connor’s, slowly, carefully, brushing across his face and shoulders first. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. I just want to be alone.”

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Liar,” Gavin whispers. “You’re allowed to, you know. Come here.”

Gavin hasn’t held him before, not really. Not like this. It’s a strange thing to think about when Gavin takes him in his arms and holds him tight, but it’s the only thing he can think about. How often he has thought about how Gavin laying with him and how perfectly he fit into that space, he never considered how perfectly he would fit into Gavin’s space if the situation were reversed. And he does. He fits there like a puzzle piece slotted into its spot. And maybe his legs are too long and maybe he’s too tall to fit quite the same way that Gavin fit against him, but his chest is still warm and his hands and his arms are still tight around him and there is a kiss pressed against his forehead and the quiet murmurings of someone trying their best to help soothe an unsoothable pain away.

Connor has never cried in front of him before. He hasn’t cried in front of anyone since his brother died. And a moment ago the tears on his cheeks were just silent tracks but now they come out as sobs that break his chest with each reminder that this will be over before he can even grab onto the feeling of it.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Gavin doesn’t say anything. There is nothing to say. There are no words to make Connor feel better. There is nothing to reassure him that he won’t be losing Gavin because he  _ is,  _ and nothing is going to change that. Not unless Connor does the unthinkable. Not unless he turns Niles in. Both of these options are horrible, horrible things, and both of them are destroying him every second he thinks about it.

  
  


**October 7th** | 11:02 A.M.

“It’s my birthday,” Gavin says quietly.

“Yeah?” Connor asks. “What do you want to do for it?”

“Nothing,” he whispers, turning to him. “Just want to stay here. Like this for a little longer.”

“Okay,” Connor says, kissing him lightly. “We can do that.”

  
  


**October 7th ** | 5:02 P.M.

“Con?” he whispers quietly, his voice hoarse from disuse for too long.

“Hm?”

“Can you cut it for me?”

“Your hair?”

“Yeah.”

He nods, “Okay.”

  
  


**October 7th ** | 5:12 P.M.

“How short do you want it?”

“Short as possible,” Gavin says quietly. “Just easier that way.”

Connor nods, taking the scissors and cutting. Locks drop to the floor, longer now that they aren’t a part of him. He should’ve done this sooner. He didn’t have the anger in him like he had before. He didn’t want to look at his face and get rid of it like he could shed everything that had happened to him. Trauma isn’t a coat he can take on and off again. It is glued to him, it is stitched inside of his organs like a patch over the tissue. Gavin couldn’t stand to look in the mirror and see his face while he tried to get rid of it all. He just couldn’t. There is something inside of him that is fundamentally changed now, and he can only bring himself to let this happen if it’s Connor who helps.

Connor cuts it as close as he can before he takes the buzzer and makes it even shorter. Gavin feels lighter and heavier at the same time. He knows he will miss the feeling of Connor’s hand in his hair, but it’s still there. His fingers still run across his head, resting on his neck, a thumb caressing it. He leads Gavin to the bathroom, turning the light on, illuminating the small space so he can see his reflection. The short hairs dusting his shoulders, the feeling of them sticking and poking his skin inside of his shirt. He’ll shower in a second, but for now, he looks at himself in the mirror and the hate that he felt before has eased slightly. A change in his appearance to help guide him away. It won’t last long. It will have the same effect that killing one of Eddie’s associates does. A fleeting feeling of relief that will be crushed within moments.

But he looks different, and Gavin can appreciate that. Just like before. A haircut to complement the trauma, isn’t that what he had felt, isn’t that what he had said?

“Better?” Connor asks.

“Better,” he whispers.

He is feeling bold. Brave. He turns to Connor, taking his hand, tugging him along toward the tub. Connor lets him, his grip on Gavin’s hand tightening. Not pulling away.

“Gav?”

“It’s not… sex. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Connor smiles, stepping closer, leaning down, pressing a kiss against his lips softly.

It’s not sex. It’s not sexual. But it’s the same type of vulnerability. No one has seen him this naked since Connor found him in the basement. Except maybe all those thousands of strangers online, watching that video of him. Gavin tries not to think about it. They have nothing to do with this moment. They have nothing to do with Gavin shedding his clothes, letting Connor’s hand trail across the scars. They have nothing to do with the Gavin doing the same thing to Connor. Finding all the little scars that match his. Bullet holes and slashes and stab wounds. Cigarette burns and places where he doesn’t know what caused the scars, but his fingers linger on them anyway.

He never really thought Connor was this scarred up. He always tried to look away if Connor wasn’t wearing a shirt, and that rarely happened to begin with. He didn’t even think about the fact Connor never wore short sleeves, either.

“Is this okay?” Gavin asks quietly. “You didn’t… before. And this—”

“It’s okay. I’ll tell you to stop if it isn’t.”

Gavin nods, the two of them separating while they get rid of the rest of their clothes, stepping into the shower. The water comes out cold at first, making him shiver, taking a step automatically backward against Connor’s chest until the water turns warm.

They don’t have sex, but Connor kisses him where he hasn’t been kissed before. Gentle things against his shoulder, his neck. His hand is on Gavin’s waist, pulling him closer, and for a moment he wishes they could have sex. They won’t see each other after the end of the month. It’s his birthday. It feels like they should. But when he turns to face Connor, he knows it isn’t an option.

It’s like before. When he thought it was all on him to make that last decision. That it would be him to decide whether or not he was ready for sex and it’s not. It’s Connor’s choice now. It’s a little freeing, it being out of his hands. He doesn’t feel the pressure. He isn’t wanted for this now. Connor just loves him, and Gavin just loves Connor.

That’s all there is. That’s all he wants. To be safe with this vulnerability, to have this kind of love. He knows he’ll never have it again, so he tries to savor it as best as he can.

**October 9th ** | 9:13 P.M.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Connor asks.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Gavin replies.

  
  


**October 10th ** | 2:23 P.M.

Eddie is the kind of person that doesn’t look like he is what he is. Gavin grew up knowing who the monsters in stories were. They were disfigured and ugly. They were obviously cruel. The grotesque nature of their insides always matched their outsides. They never properly died. Horror movie villains never do. Sequels always have to be ready for cash-grabs, and there always has to be this underlying feeling that they could always come back. That was always part of the horror. That the monster could never really die, that the people would never really be free.

But Eddie doesn’t look like that. He is charming. He is the picture of just-average enough that he can’t even be categorized with the same type of Hollywood actors that shield their violence and aggression underneath their good looks and their money. Eddie is average, but with a smile that looks a little lopsided and hair brushed back like a charming gentleman. Gavin would’ve been drawn to him at any bar. He would’ve matched with him on dating apps. He would’ve sought him out.

He is the type of person that Gavin likes, based on appearance alone. And they’ve had forced moments where Eddie pretends to let down that cape of anger and hatred and pretend that he is a good guy, underneath it all. There were moments that Eddie made Gavin understand how people could fall in love with their captors and forgive them of their sins. And there were moments when he was too scared and too broken to do anything about stopping him or think of a possible future where anything would happen but Gavin running away and hiding in solitude.

Gavin always wanted to kill them. He just never thought he could until Connor came along. And even then, it wasn’t until Gavin killed the one in his apartment that he thought he was actually capable of it.

There are times when he knows he still isn’t. Where he has to bring together everything inside of him to hurt someone.

He turns his pocket knife over in his hands. A little bit tarnished, a little bit stained with blood. He places it in his pocket, taking Connor’s hand as they leave the apartment together, coats pulled up over their shoulders, exiting the warmth of the apartment to the brisk cold of October together, and Gavin worries with the way Connor looks at him that he is like Eddie in some way. That he is manipulating Connor to be with him. That he is showing this unknown side of himself to Connor to keep him wanting Gavin. He hasn’t shied away from his upset and he hasn’t tried to suffocate his anger, but he worries, constantly, that this love between them is something that Gavin is being toxic with. He worries that his broken nature is guilt-tripping Connor into wanting to stay. That the love isn’t real.

This entire time Gavin has been selfish, he thinks. He hasn’t paid enough attention to Connor and how upset he is and how upset he can get. He is worried that everything is too much about him. He’s worried that in every moment he will make it about himself. He has always been a selfish creature, and now there is an image of Connor in his head crying on the bathroom floor and Gavin knows that it’s because of him.

It shouldn’t matter what choice Connor’s been given. The two of them aren’t good for each other. Gavin would’ve left him either way. He deserves better. He deserves someone who will care about him. Gavin does love him, so he will leave him. This choice is mostly just his easier way of doing it. Putting the blame on the ICA so Connor won’t argue with him about it.

He doesn’t want to be like Eddie. He doesn’t want to be a monster. He doesn’t want to hurt someone he loves as much as Connor.

  
  


**October 10th ** | 7:05 P.M.

Gavin is surprised when he falls asleep and wakes to find the clock has jumped forward, that there is this foggy feeling in his head that he used to get when he was a kid and would fall asleep in those long car rides to visit extended family for the holidays. Those were the days when he still believed that he could be something. It was before Elijah told him that he wasn’t a good singer, and it was before Chris left the band for his high school sweetheart and far, far before Tina let go of their dream of being in a band.

And it seems stupid to think about it now. But Gavin watches the buildings pass by and he thinks about how he ended up here. How he became this person that he hates so much. He doesn’t remember hating himself this much as a child. Gavin remembers having hopes and dreams and thinking he could have this amazing future where he would be able to sing and be a part of music. When he actually thought it was something he could grasp onto and take. And it felt so possible. There was no part of him that looked ahead and saw himself as anything other than a famous musician with his friends and his brother. With his tiny little family.

He never thought about anything else except that.

And somewhere along the way he stopped thinking about how he could get this future and attain his dreams and instead think  _ how impossible is it to believe he gets a future at all?  _ Somewhere along the way it fell apart and he was left with nothing but a void when he looked forward. There was nothing there. It would just be him, struggling to survive. Maybe not money struggles or romantic struggles, but a personal, deep-seated issue Gavin has with himself that he would wrestle every time he thought  _ what was the point? _

And it hurts now, looking to Connor, and seeing a point and finding a reason not just to live but to try and get better and find a new passion and future for himself he could fight for. It hurts knowing that he doesn’t even get that, because as he will say a hundred times over, he will never make Connor choose him over Niles. Gavin is not going to make someone choose him. Maybe—

Maybe because he knows they never will.

Gavin never broke up with people because he knew they would never fight for him. He broke off friendships during fights because he knew he couldn’t bring himself to look past his own stubborn and ruthless behavior to offer a real apology. Things fall apart around him and there’s no reason to pick it back up again. And even if he did, why would he ever risk someone spitting his apology back at him, throwing it in the dirt, tossing him aside?

Connor is the only person he has ever tried to live as himself, and he is terrified that even if he wasn’t given this opportunity to run away, Connor would eventually see the flaws inside of him and leave him regardless.

The future is terrifying. The future isn’t something he really wants anymore. He just wants Connor and he knows he won’t get that now.

People don’t fight for him. They don’t want him. None of this is worth it anymore. He lost everything he ever wanted and now he’s just a shell of himself.

He doesn’t want to lose Connor, but he has to let him go. It has to be Gavin’s choice now.

Kill Eddie. Run away. That’s all there is left. That’s all there ever really was. The ICA changes nothing.

  
  


**October 10th ** | 7:34 P.M.

“We’re here.”

The car comes to a stop on the edge of the street. The two sit in the car as it shuts off and the windows are cracked slightly, the cool air allowing the scent of freshly mowed lawns to fill the space. There are two cars in the driveway. A beat-up old truck and a tiny car that looks like the one Gavin had before he was old enough to rebel against his parent’s wishes and get the motorcycle he always wanted. The motorcycle he abandoned in a parking lot a year ago and was too scared to go back to and see if it was still there. He still is. He doesn’t know what seeing it would change. He just doesn’t want to see it anymore.

“Gavin?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, forcing the words out. “That I got you into this mess. I should’ve listened to you when you told me it was a bad idea. If I had known the ICA would do this to you… I wouldn’t have called you that night.”

“You’d sacrifice us and your revenge for me?”

“In a fucking heartbeat,” Gavin laughs lightly, lacking all traces of humor. “You know I just want you to be happy, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“When you told me that I was just accepting this,” Gavin heaves in a breath, lets it out in a long shaking exhale. “It’s not true. I’m not accepting it. I wish I could have you forever. I just know that… losing your brother isn’t something that someone should go through. And you already lost one of them. Seven is dead. You can’t lose Niles, too.”

“Gav—”

“You can find someone else to love and a different way to escape the ICA. You can’t find a new brother, Connor.”

“I know that. I just—I don’t want to find someone else. I want you.”

Gavin reaches out, taking his hand, pressing the back of it to his lips, “I want you, too. And I’ll miss you. More than fucking anything in the entire world. You know that? But we can’t… we can’t pretend that we’re more important than you and Niles. I’m glad I met you. I’m not glad for how and why, but I am glad I got to love you and have you. Even if it wasn’t for as long as I wanted.”

“Gavin,” Connor whispers, leaning across the space toward him. “Can you promise me something?”

He nods slowly, “What?”

“Keep the necklace,” he says, a hand resting against his chest, his palm centered with where the quarter lies underneath his shirt. “So that I can be with you. In some way.”

It’s cheesy and it’s stupid and Gavin knows he is only calling it such to try and break the tension and the meaning of Connor’s words, but he nods, even if he has a hundred reasons as to why Connor should take it back. It’s the only thing Seven left behind. Connor should have it. But Gavin remembers the moment when the necklace was placed around his neck and it reminds him of all the times Connor has been there for him when he has been moments from breaking and seconds from giving up.

Gavin knows, now, that he would be dead if Connor wasn’t here for him.

“I love you,” Gavin says quietly. “I won’t be able to say it enough times by the end of the month, you know. I can’t fill up a lifetime in twenty days.”

“I love you too,” Connor whispers. He tilts up Gavin’s chin, kissing him lightly. And it does feel a little bit like a promise. Like that love won’t disappear so soon.

  
  


**October 10th ** | 8:03 P.M.

“That’s him,” Gavin says quietly.

The door to the house closes behind a man as he waves goodbye to a young girl. Young enough to be in high school, with a uniform that matches it. She climbs into the car, driving off as he— _ Eddie— _ finishes his wave and turns inside the house again. The two of them stay in the silence there for a moment.

The planning of attacks against these people have been varied from overly thought out to spur of the moment. Most of them falling along the same pattern: watch / wait / sneak / poison / torture / kill. Connor has another syringe, but they came to this house with nothing but the address in hand. They don’t have time to survey all the entrances to the building. They don’t have time to look up blueprints and see which way would be best. There is no time to wait and see if the neighbors are listening and watching. They are repeating what they did with Trager: moving fast so they don’t have to worry that they’ll catch wind that they’re next and run once more.

They’ve lucked out so much with this. But it shouldn’t surprise Connor. He’s dealt with people like this before. Cocky, thinking that they have an upper hand just because they’re arrogant and ruthless. It means nothing except that Eddie thought he was good enough, that his minions adored him and kept their tongues held. He was wrong. He was stupid and he was wrong.

“We can go around the back,” Connor says. “So nobody catches us picking the front door.”

He’s stating the obvious now, buying time as the sun sets. They need the darkness to help hide them, and the only response he gets from Gavin is a nod.

“Are you alright?”

“You have my back,” Gavin says, his gaze snapping away from the front door, the fog across his features gone. “Right?”

“Of course.”

  
  


**October 10th** | 8:13 P.M.

Connor has had a lot of practice picking locks. Every kind. He wasn’t the lock breaker that Simon was, but he was close. There were days spent in the dark, listening to the inner mechanisms of a safe as he turned the dial, the sound haunting his dreams. He was never a thief, but he could have been. Connor would’ve preferred that line of work to this. Maybe he would’ve met Gavin some other way. Needing a hacker to help get into an art museum. But now that line of work is lost. Gavin doesn’t like hacking. Connor doesn’t think he ever did. It was just easy and it paid well. He doesn’t touch his laptop now. He stopped the moment they didn’t need the DPD’s files to find their targets.

The back door of the house is easy to pick. It’s a standard house lock. There’s only one. Not even a deadbolt. Connor thinks if he looked hard enough in the backyard, he might’ve found the spare key hidden under one of the planters shaped like frogs, but they couldn’t risk a light to help guide the way. Even Gavin stays crouched beside the steps, hidden from view if anyone were to glance out their window.

The door swings open quietly, Connor only letting it open enough to get inside. Gavin follows him, the door closing behind both of them silently, but the sound of it sliding into place sounds loud like it always does when he’s sneaking around. The house is dark, the only light spilling from a room down the hallway. Gavin is close behind him, too close. Almost close enough that Connor wishes he could stop him and tell him it’s okay. Take a breath. Take a step back.

But it’s different than it was before. Connor doesn’t know the extent of what each person did to Gavin, but he knows Eddie is the last, and he knows Eddie was the only one that let his name be known to Gavin. He doesn’t know what that entails, but he sees traces of the same fear that Gavin had at the butcher, the same that broke him at Jefferson’s apartment. He is on the edge of breaking.

_ You have my back, right? _

He was asking Connor, again, to take over if he freezes.

Gavin thinks he’s going to freeze.

Maybe he always does. Maybe Connor missed the signs when Gavin would ask in his own way before with the others too, when he wasn’t so explicit, but this is like a step back, not asking Connor directly to kill someone if he couldn’t. Because it’s the last? Because it’s Eddie? Because it amounts to more?

Connor is aware of how much this means to him. He’s aware the hurting these people feels a little like he can take himself back, even if that isn’t true. He wasn’t even near Trager’s torture, even though he pulled the trigger. Something inside of Gavin changed since he saw the sonogram. He has been different ever since. He hasn’t spoken with the same anger. It has been replaced with this numbness in his voice that has left him quiet.

His hand moves to the gun on his waist as he sneaks a peek through the sliver of the door left open. Into an office that looks so similar to Bagwell’s for a moment he is thrown back in time. But this office, the desk is facing the door, not the wall. Eddie is sitting in the chair, staring at a screen and all it would take is one movement, for his eyes to flick upwards, to see them on the other side.

They won’t be able to sneak up behind him.

Connor takes the gun from his holster, straightening up, inhaling a breath, exhaling it slowly. He takes a step away from Gavin, a hand moving up to push the door the rest of the way open, aiming the gun at Eddie. He is quiet in his actions, but Eddie still notices, jumping slightly, looking up to him.

“Don’t move.”

  
  


**October 10th** | 8:29 P.M.

It’s a routine of tying people up now. It’s different, though, with Gavin being the one tying the knots. Being the person trusted to make them tight enough, strong enough. But he doesn’t think it will matter. They aren’t going anywhere. Gavin knows how little time he has with Connor. As much as he’d like to stretch out this torture for a week straight, a month, a year, he really, mostly, just wants to get it over with. He just wants Eddie dead so he can go back to Detroit and sit in that apartment with Connor and hope that he can soak up enough love and attention to sustain himself for the rest of his life.

And that’s when he realizes this doesn’t matter to him anymore at all.

He wants Eddie to feel pain. He wants him to feel the same agony and humiliation that he felt every time his mouth was forced open or his legs pushed apart. But the anger inside of him is dulled by Connor being pulled away from him. This just feels so pointless now. The anger is still there but his desire to just have the love he wants is outweighing it tenfold.

“Second-guessing yourself?” Eddie says, tilting his head, watching Gavin watch him.

“No,” he replies.

They destroyed his soul. There is nothing left of it, and even if there was, he doesn’t think these acts of murder and torment would destroy it. They deserve it, and even if they didn’t, he doesn’t care about saving his soul anymore. Gavin just cares about saving Connor. This isn’t his moment of realizing his moral wrongdoings. This is his moment of letting pieces of his anger go.

Gavin turns to the bag he’s set on the desk, taking the ax from inside. Small. A hatchet that’s heavy in his hands. He pulls the cover from off the blade, turning it over in the light. Every time they raped him it felt like they were severing part of his body from himself. Isn’t it fitting to do the same to Eddie?

It won’t be enough pain to make up for it, but that’s fine. His death will do.

He buries the blade in Eddie’s shoulder, the scream erupting from him enough to remind Gavin he should’ve gagged him. What does it matter, though? If he’s caught, he can go to prison. The ICA will bail Connor out. The choice of Niles-or-Gavin will be made even easier then. Nothing matters if they get caught, as long as Eddie dies in the end. Eli will, unfortunately, be subjected to learning the truth, but maybe it will be for the best. He won’t have to carry this as a secret.

The scream stops, turning into a gasping whimper that turns into—

A static-filled cry?

A baby’s cry, coming over the speaker with a voice muffled over it—

_ “Shh. Shh, don’t cry.” _

  
  


**October 10th** | 8:32 P.M.

The ax falls from Gavin’s hand, hitting the carpet with a soft thud as his eyes search the office, finding the baby monitor hidden alongside the paperweights and office supplies. Stuck between the stapler and the tape dispenser. A piece of white plastic in Gavin’s hand and the sound of a voice spilling out the other side. Connor recognizes it at the same time that Gavin does, but he doesn’t react as quickly.

The name is just like it was the first time he met Gavin. Echoing around his head, throwing him off. Pausing him like a statue.

_ Niles. _

He races after Gavin, following the footsteps as they lead the path from the hallway to the stairs, up the steps and announcing their arrival before they even get the door to the nursery open.

Gavin stumbles to a halt, falling backward a step against Connor’s chest. The small space of the nursery only illuminated by a shell-shaped night light plugged into the wall. A soft golden glow across Niles’ features as he holds the infant in his arms, cradling her to his chest.

There was something off before—

With Trager.

He couldn’t tell what it was. He knew she was lying, but he couldn’t pinpoint what. He thought it was how the baby died or that Gavin really was the father. But it wasn’t. It was that the baby didn’t die at all. She just let Eddie take her. Little nameless Jane Doe in his brother’s arms, wrapped up in a soft blue blanket.

“Hello, Connor.”

“What are you doing here?” Gavin asks, and Connor knows even before he looks to Gavin’s face that his eyes aren’t on Niles, but on the baby. The baby that made his thoughts break and shift as he raced around Trager’s home looking for evidence of her existence. The baby that could be his.

“What are  _ you  _ doing here?” Niles returns.

“Niles—” Connor starts, but he’s silenced, not really knowing where he was going with it. He’s stuck, like someone has hit him. All of his words have left. Every sluggish movement he felt in the last few years by just hearing Niles’ name is brought tenfold by seeing his face.

And he looks so different. It isn’t just the eyes, the surgery to place blue contacts over dark brown, but something about the way he holds himself, the way he’s dressed. Connor can’t figure it out. He just seems  _ wrong.  _ He seems  _ off.  _ He doesn’t seem like the Niles that Connor met with six years ago, before he abandoned the ICA and broke his contract.

“You left a mess behind you in Nevada,” Niles says, his voice calm, casual. “I’m cleaning it up.”

“How so?”

“Trager’s mother wants the baby,” Niles says, looking toward the girl in his arms. The one who’s cries have subsided into silent sobs. “She hired me to take her back.”

“And you just happen to be here now?” Connor asks, reaching out to Gavin when he moves forward. His finger grabs a belt loop, pulling him to the spot.  _ Don’t go forward. Don’t move a step closer. _

Niles won’t hurt the baby, there’s a paycheck waiting for him. But there is something that feels wrong about letting Gavin get too close to him. Maybe because Connor has figured out the shift in his expression now. There is no more Niles left on his face, despite his shushing of the baby, despite his gentle hold on her, he is Nines again. He has been Nines for a while. It sounds stupid, to dissect and divide their personalities like this when there’s no real reason to. But Niles embodied every part of humanity that he had left in him, and it’s all gone. He has a gun on him, even if he isn’t aiming it at either of them. Niles wouldn’t come here without a weapon. Connor doesn’t think he will kill Gavin, but he knows he’ll hurt him.

“I followed you,” Niles says. “I thought the timing would be better. Missing baby and dead father. You should’ve been more cautious before, though.”

“You followed us?” Connor asks quietly. “You didn’t know where he was, did you?”

“No. I don’t have access to the ICA anymore. I don’t have your fancy hackers. I only had him,” Niles says, looking toward Gavin. “I’ll be going now, if that’s alright with you.”

“No,” Gavin whispers. “Put her down. Leave her.”

Niles smiles, and for a moment, it seems almost genuine. But it’s genuine in the way they are taught to fake their authenticity, and Connor sees through it in a split second. In the split second it takes for the hand at Niles’ side to move, raising the gun from his side to the two of them. To Gavin, settling his aim on his chest. It makes Gavin’s body turn rigid, a small step taken backwards again. His hand moves to Connor’s hand, moves to his waist, taking the gun from the holster as casually as possible. But Connor knows Niles sees it, even if he isn’t looking directly at it.  _ This is what they’re taught.  _ See things without showing that they see it, but Connor doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t know how. He can’t speak.

“I can’t do that.”

“You can. Just tell her that Trager killed her. That’s what she told us. The baby is dead. Just leave her.”

“Why? So you can have her? She isn’t yours, you know.”

Gavin shakes his head.  _ That’s not the point.  _ Connor doesn’t know what the point is, but he knows that’s what Gavin is trying to say. It isn’t the point of who fathered the baby, the point is keeping her away from that family that created a monster. The point is getting her away from it all. Because Gavin wants her safe. It doesn’t matter if she’s his or not, he wants her safe. He might even just want her. Connor doesn’t know. It wasn’t something they discussed. It felt impossible to discuss the things like Trager’s baby when they were facing so many other things.

“Give her to me, Niles,” Gavin whispers.

“Or what, you’ll shoot me?” Niles asks. “I know you won’t do that. You wouldn’t risk hurting her, and you aren’t fast enough.”

Gavin lifts the gun up from his side, turning as he aims it at Connor.

_ Connor. _

Not Niles, but  _ him. _

Connor looks back at him, trying to make his brain work, trying to get his hand and his feet and his mouth to do something other than sit dead silent. He doesn’t know what’s happening to him. Niles and Gavin, both ready to kill one another.  _ What is going on? _

“But I’ll shoot him. Do you want me to kill him? Your brother? You want to be at fault for another one of your brothers being dead? You want to be the only one left alive, the one that fucking deserved it the least?”

“Gavin—” Connor whispers, and he hopes it sounds real. He hopes it encompasses all of the terror that he feels at the sliver of chance that he thinks Gavin would actually pull the trigger, but he knows he won’t. He knows that Gavin would never do that.

He loves him. He loves him and he doesn’t believe that Gavin is doing this for any other reason than trying to get what he wants. But there is a sliver. There is a little tiny chance that Gavin is choosing the baby over him. And could Connor really blame him for that? It’s an infant. She has her entire life ahead of her. Connor has already destroyed his past and his future. Gavin must understand that, too.

“Put the gun down,” Niles says. “You aren’t going to shoot him. You two love each other. Stop pretending.”

Gavin’s hand shakes as he holds the gun to Connor, the barrel brushing up against his chest. Connor could take it from him before he even had the chance to pull the trigger.  _ Gavin won’t pull the trigger, though.  _ This is stupid. Niles sees right through it. This isn’t working.

“You’re a monster,” Gavin whispers. “Just give me this one thing, Niles. You’ve hurt me so much and you have to take this, too?”

“She isn’t yours,” Niles replies, his voice calm, quiet. “You have to—”

He pauses, his words cut off. Connor sees the shift in Niles’ face at the same time that Gavin does. The movement of his eyes past Gavin’s head, the shift of his gun away from Gavin to the figure behind him. But none of the three are fast enough to react to stop it from happening.

  
  


**October 10th** | 8:37 P.M.

Gavin turns, following Niles’ gaze behind him, the tears lodged in his throat, his thoughts a mess of everything and nothing and the darkness and the blur and he has barely turned before the gun has fired, before he is stumbling backwards, falling against Connor’s chest, the pain blooming across his chest so heavy and dark but all he can focus on his how little oxygen is in his lungs, how impossible it is to breathe as he stares up in the darkness.

Everything is so loud. He feels nothing but the  _ throb throb throb  _ of pain in his chest, but he is vaguely aware of the gun leaving his hand, of the sound of another shot and the  _ thud thud thud  _ of a body falling. The darkness lingers, the pain echoing in the distance of his head. Hands on his chest, pressing down on the wound, making him cough and choke.

He can’t hear anything. He can’t see anything. He thinks Connor is saying his name. He thinks someone is crying. He thinks multiple people are crying. There are so many screams and tears that he can’t tell them apart in the dark. He can only feel the hands on his chest, pressing down, like they are pushing him further and further into the black. He is disappearing into it. He is falling deeper and deeper. He doesn’t know how to get back up again.

_ “Gavin?” _

  
  


**October 17th** | 5:46 A.M.

It hurts. It hurts it hurts it fucking hurts and it doesn’t stop fucking hurting.

  
  


**October 29th ** | 7:34 P.M.

“Connor?”

Connor turns away from the apartment building, facing North on the street, leaning against the car she’s packed up with all the boxes of things he can’t take with him to Seattle but doesn’t want the ICA to take and burn away in their incinerator. No trace can be left behind, except the things he lets North save for him in her attic. As a cleaner with the ICA, she can stay in Detroit her entire life. She can have a house and a wife and kids if she wanted. She might, someday. Not yet, as far as he knows. All her empty space will one day be used up by them, he thinks.

“I was supposed to have until February,” he says, walking away, joining her by the car. “It’s weird to think of a place as home when I wasn’t even here for a year?”

“Yeah,” she shrugs. “But then again, it’s the first time you’ve been able to have a friend in the area, so maybe it was all me.”

He smiles softly, not knowing how much of that is the truth. The place felt like home before he met Gavin, so maybe she’s onto something. He felt like this was finally going to be a proper home for him for the first time since Niles left. He doesn’t know why. He really played himself. He always tries to fool himself into thinking that he has a life when he knows he won’t.

“When are you leaving?” North asks.

“In a few days,” Connor replies. “The ICA wanted the apartment cleared out before then so they could send people to make sure that there’s nothing I left behind. I’m staying in a hotel until my flight.”

“And are you going to see him?” she asks. “Before you go?”

“After everything that happened at Eddie’s place? I think the ICA would kill me. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way.”

“Oh,” she says. “You mean you didn’t plan for a dozen cops to show up at Eddie’s place in the middle of the night? Here I always thought that was your M.O.”

“You’re not funny,” he says. “But thanks for trying.”

“Can you blame me?” North sighs. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Call me. Don’t disappear just because you’re leaving Detroit, okay?”

“Okay,” he says, stepping forward, hugging her for likely the first and last time he will ever get before he digs his keys out of his pocket, waving a last goodbye as he heads to his car. It is an awkward and uncomfortable goodbye, but he was never very good at those. He tries his best. He hopes it conveys how much he cares about her, how he wishes that his time here was spent a little differently. That he could’ve treated her like the friend she is to him.

He really messed everything up, didn’t he?

  
  


**October 29th ** | 4:39 P.M.

Gavin doesn’t hallucinate, but he has vivid dreams. He always has. He has bad dreams and he has good dreams. Dreams where he is in the basement. Dreams where he is dropped in the middle of the ocean, sinking further and further down, past all these creatures and all this terrain that scientists haven’t been able to discover. Down further and further into the black. He has dreams where he’s a teenager, waking up and heading out into the city with Eli and Tina and Chris. Or sitting in the old treehouse at Tina’s place and writing lyrics in a notebook, listening to her sing them along in a way that he hadn’t initially thought of, but prefers. He dreams of apartments in the city and arguing over paint colors with a boy that he loves. He has dreams where he gets to put a ring on his finger and call him his husband. He has dreams where he has children and happiness and hope. He has dreams within dreams within those dreams. He does his best to avoid Connor, but he always slips through the cracks.

Because when Gavin dreams, he dreams of the life he wishes he could have if he had let Connor just make the choice he wanted to, or if he had made it for him, or if he had shot Niles like he wanted to instead of being the one shot, being the one pushed back into the inky blackness that feels like the deep sea. It still feels like sludge. He doesn’t know if he’s healing as quickly as the nurses and doctors want him to be. He doesn’t know if he cares. Eddie managed to, in the last moment of his life, hurt Gavin once more.

Laying here in the hospital room, the blinds drawn, the lights dimmed, he can dream his dreams where Eddie doesn’t exist. Where none of them ever existed.

He can dream those vivid details—

But he doesn’t hallucinate. Even after all this time, Gavin doesn’t hallucinate. And this dream he is having should be vanishing by now because Connor can’t be in the doorway to his room. He can’t be here at all. The ICA will figure it out. They’re the ones in charge of this facility. They’re the ones that had a nurse bring him a note that said his and Connor’s deadline is nonexistent now. Connor’s choice has been made for him. His offer has been rescinded.

After all, the Eddie situation went rather sideways. Any leeway Connor had was lost when the ICA resources were put together to buy the silence of cops and detectives and fabricate a new story to put in its place. The baby is still missing, and by extension, so is Niles. Or maybe it’s the opposite. It doesn’t matter.

Gavin is thinking about the baby, and he is thinking about Connor, and he is thinking that Connor shouldn’t be standing there, watching him like that.

“Are you okay?”

_ Gavin does not hallucinate. _

“Connor?” he says quietly, testing the name, asking the question quietly because now he is afraid that he will dispel this hallucination he does have, because all he has wanted these last couple of weeks was Connor at his side, holding his hand, telling him it will be okay. He just wants Connor here. Maybe that’s why he is.

“No,” his hallucination says, taking a careful step forward. “Niles.”

_ No. _

It is as much of a heartbreak as it would be if it were a hallucination, and Gavin has to curb the tears in his eyes and he deflects it with anger. Summoning every ounce of rage he has for the brother that has showed up.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Gavin replies. “The ICA is watching me you know.”

“By the time they get here I’ll be gone,” Niles says, taking a few steps forward. “I’ll make sure they know it was me and not Connor.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want them to hurt him.”

“No, I mean  _ why do you care?” _

“He’s my brother.”

Gavin shakes his head. Even after it all, even after the love Gavin knows Connor feels for Niles, even after Gavin wanted to force Connor to pick him, it is still so unbelievable that Niles would say the same in return for Connor. It feels like a brotherly relationship that’s gone one-sided. It feels like those times when Gavin felt like an infant next to Eli, looking up to him, shoving his way into friend groups, wanting to be like his cool older brother, even if that older part was only by a few months, and even if that brother part was only half. But Niles and Connor aren’t two brothers in normal circumstances. They are assassin and hitman, a distinguishing fact that he remembers Connor clinging to, even if Gavin didn’t really understand every part of what he was trying to say.

“Why are you here, then?” Gavin asks quietly. He wishes they would give him more drugs. The pain is still heavy and lingering and he doesn’t want to look at Niles right now. He keeps tearing his eyes away only for them to fall back, to pretend that in that split second he looks, somehow Niles will transform into the person he wants here.

“To explain what happened.”

Gavin shakes his head, but Niles is already stepping forward, lifting his head up, drawing in a breath like he had done in those times they were looking at files and research and Niles was preparing to let out a long but vague explanation that was sterile and clinical, designed to get Gavin to stop asking questions. He doesn’t want to hear his explanations, but Niles says them anyway.

“I worked for Eddie. I know you found that out. I didn’t know what he was up to, I just wanted a boss that wasn’t so politically inclined and restrictive like the ICA. I just wanted to go. They watched our every movement. I couldn’t exist. So I left because Eddie was the better option. You know that already, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know that I hired you because I found out Eddie was trafficking people. I wanted to stop him. I was trying to find where he was keeping them at.”

“And when you did, you left me and you didn’t care what they were going to do to me because of your stupid fucking plan.”

“Not really. You didn’t have the skills it required to find out his location,” Niles replies, and that bit stings. Another thing Gavin can add in his list of things he isn’t good enough to do. “They did tell me they were going to take you. It was their retaliation.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t care,” Niles says quietly. “I won’t lie. It didn’t bother me. You didn’t know where I was going. I thought they would catch onto that fairly quickly and let you go. I didn’t think it would… I didn’t think they would hurt you. And you know I’m not a good person, Gavin.”

“Don’t say that as if it absolves you of anything, you piece of shit.”

Niles shrugs, like he knows, like he doesn’t care that he knows, “I didn’t know where they were keeping you. That’s why I didn’t go after you when they sent the tapes. I would’ve if I knew.”

He doesn’t believe him. Gavin doesn’t know why he doesn’t believe him. He just refuses to. It is easier to keep Niles as the villain in his head. Someone to continue to hate now that everyone else he hates is dead and the only person he loves is gone. Eventually, when he gets out of here, all he’ll have left is Eli. It’s the only thing keeping him going, but even then Gavin doesn’t know if he could go to him.

“Is that all?” Gavin asks, his voice a whisper. “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

“No. There’s… Trager’s mother is a good person. The baby is safe with her. I thought you should know that, too. I wouldn’t have given her to someone that would hurt her.”

Gavin doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to say that  _ he  _ wouldn’t have hurt her. He isn’t fit to be a father. Not right now. But there is this lingering thought in the back of his head that the baby could still be his. That this little bundle of life might share part of his DNA. Or she might be the daughter of two monsters. But that doesn’t make her one.

But he does believe Niles when he says this. Even someone soulless like him can’t truly lose the memories of what those people did to him when he was a baby, kidnapped from his own parents. It is the better option. Gavin knows it is. 

“I just wanted her to be safe from them.”

Niles nods, “She is. I promise.”

And just like that, with those four words, he is Niles again. He wasn’t the night Gavin got shot. He’d never seen Niles really switch off entirely into that other version of him, but the man standing here, this glimmer, this sliver, this tiny little moment of humanity, is the thing Gavin clung to the entire time they were together. But it’s just that. A glimmer, a sliver, a tiny little moment of humanity.

It won’t stay. Niles can never shed all of the Nines parts of himself to be Niles fully.

“I have to go,” Niles says quietly, turning toward the door. “I’m sorry. For everything. I wish I… I wish I was a good person. I wish I could have stopped this, you know.”

“I know.”

He nods again, the concern and the vulnerability, as small as it is on his face, smooths away with each movement he makes towards the door. Hand on the knob, turning it, golden light of the hallway spilling into the darkened room.

“And Gavin?”

“Yeah?”

“I know about the deal they tried to make with Connor. I heard they took it away after everything that happened that night. It should’ve gone differently. I wish it had.”

Wishes and wishes and wishes.

What do they matter?

“So do I.”

  
  


**October 30th ** | 3:01 P.M.

He is making a last visit to the ICA. Last bits of paperwork before he leaves this city for good, and all Connor can think about is how he’s messed this up. Hank isn’t his handler anymore. His brother is gone. He is being shipped off to Seattle. He won’t see North or Hank, even if he’ll be able to call them, and he’ll never see Gavin again. He would destroy everything for any of them, but it doesn’t matter anymore.

Connor is up on the second level, overlooking the open space of the first floor, talking with Hank about his new apartment. Wanting to tell him the small details about it, like the fact he has walls now. His bedroom is separate from his living room and his kitchen might be smaller, but there is something nice about not being exposed. He tells Hank this, wrapped up with all the words about how much he hates that he has to go to Seattle, how much he is already deciding he doesn’t want to be there, like he can apologize to Hank without saying the words.

But then he is apologizing. Again and again and trying to get it across how much he regrets this. They aren’t allowed to show affection. Especially not at the ICA headquarters, but Hank hugs him anyway.

_ It’s okay. _

_ It’s okay, kid. _

_ But I did warn you not to fall in love with him, didn’t I? _

Connor is laughing about it, grateful in the practice he’s had of holding back tears.

And then it happens.

He is looking towards the front wall. All glass windows and glass doors, looking out over the perfectly manicured front of the building with its fountain and hedges, which are decorated for Halloween like they’re a real paper company and not murderers for hire.

And then there he is. Stepping into the building. Cool and casual like this is easy, like this is nothing at all.

_ Niles. _

He catches Connor’s gaze at the same time and for the first time since Seven died, Niles smiles, and Connor knows it’s real, and he can’t return it.

He knows why Niles is here.

“You know,” Hank says, watching the guards rush forward toward Niles with their guns, like Niles is here to destroy the place from top to bottom. “When the ICA first contacted me saying that there was suspicious activity going on, I didn’t think they were talking about you.”

“What?” Connor says, looking away.

“Nothing,” he says quietly, stepping away. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Hank—” he says, calling after him, watching Hank disappear down the hallway. He considers running after him, but he is turning back, watching Niles’ arms be forced behind his back, cuffs slipped over his wrists.

  
  


**October 31st ** | 7:33 A.M.

He is a fast runner. He has good reflexes. He is the fastest of the three brothers. Always and forever. And still, he isn’t fast enough.

The moment the ICA finalized their deal, the moment his name was signed onto the paper and they told him he could go, he did.

Connor doesn’t even know if the ink is dry. He doesn’t care. He is racing down hospital hallways, being yelled at by nurses but it doesn’t matter to him. He reaches Gavin’s room fast, throwing open the doors with such a force that he is wincing at the pain of it against his side when he stumbles in.

“Connor?”

He doesn’t know what to say. He sees Gavin and maybe it’s because he thought, for a split second, that he would never see him again or because Gavin looks weak and ill and all bandaged up and lying on the bed, but he is crying and his words have left him as he stumbles over to his side, careful when he collapses against Gavin’s side not to touch the shoulder that was shot. The wound is still there, the fractured bone is still mending itself back together again.

“Connor—”

“Niles turned himself in,” he whispers. “They let me go.”

“W-What?”

“The ICA is letting me go. It was Niles’ only condition to come back.”

“They’re letting you go,” Gavin echoes.

“Not right away,” Connor whispers. “I still have to move to Seattle and I won’t be allowed back in Detroit for the rest of the contract they outlined, but in five years, I won’t—I won’t be working for them anymore. I can be with you. One two-week visit a year for five years. It’s—”

“It’s shitty.”

“It’s shitty,” Connor repeats with a laugh. “But I’ll be free.”

“You’ll be free,” Gavin repeats and Connor smiles and he laughs. “You’re really here then, huh?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“And you’re free.”

Connor laughs again, burying his face against Gavin’s neck, knowing that he is likely hurting him but needing to be close, even if it means his tears are getting on Gavin’s skin and the smell of the overly clean hospital is stuck inside of him. It doesn’t matter. Gavin is here. His stubble is scratching the skin of his face and his hands are holding onto Connor’s side tight and he can feel the cold sliver of the chain from the necklace against his cheek.

And he’s going to be free.

A shitty five years, but he’ll be free.

Niles turned himself in for this. For Connor to be happy. To have Gavin. To make up for something or anything or everything. He doesn’t know. Niles made the choice for him, and he didn’t leave any sliver of room for Connor to fight back.

_ You love him, don’t you? _

_ Yes, I do. _

_ Then be with him. _

Connor pulls away, just because he needs to kiss Gavin, too. And he does and it’s nice and soft and sweet and a little too hungry and craving with all that missed time. It wasn’t even a fraction of the time they would’ve been apart if Niles didn’t come back, and it will be nothing compared to the months and months they will have to suffer through without each other.

The ICA would’ve given him full freedom completely and immediately if Connor had accepted their deal and brought Niles in. But he didn’t. Niles fought hard to get Connor the deal he could have, and even if it’s shitty from the standpoint of a long-distance relationship and only a visit once a year, it is incredible what Niles got them to agree to.

"Hey," Gavin says quietly, tugging on his shirt. "I'm sorry I threatened to shoot you, I didn't—"

"It's okay. I know."

Gavin nods silently,  “And when are you leaving for Seattle?”

“Two days from now,” Connor whispers. “I’ll be here. Until then.”

Gavin nods just the tiniest bit. Unhappy with this news, but Connor knows that isn’t why he’s crying. His hands come up, brushing the tears away, pressing a kiss against his lips once more. Two days isn’t enough time to say goodbye even for a year. He knows that if their situation were different, the space would do them good, but he’s terrified that this is too much space now. But they’ll manage it. Connor has to believe that they will. It’s not like he’d ever let Gavin go anyway.

“You can still call me every night, right?”

“Right. And I will. Every night. Even when you’re asleep. You’ll hate me for it. You’ll get sick of me. And we can video chat.”

Gavin nods, letting Connor’s hope infect him.

“I love you,” he says quietly.

“Love you, too,” Gavin replies, his words hoarse. 

_ Freedom. _

Five years from now, but freedom nonetheless.

Connor likes the sound of that.

  
  


**November 2nd ** | 4:15 P.M.

“You’re going to be late for your plane,” Gavin says.

“Guess I’ll just have to take a later flight.”

He smiles, holding onto Connor’s hand a little tighter, “You don’t really want to risk that, do you?”

“I just don’t want to leave.”

“Well,” Gavin says quietly. “You’ll come back. Eventually.”

“Eventually,” Connor repeats. “But yeah. Always.”

Connor kisses him again, and Gavin knows this time it really is the last one, not like the twenty that preceded it with comments about how he was going to miss his flight. This time he can feel the sadness in it. Not the joke-y lighthearted feeling the rest had.

This one is the last, and Gavin holds him there a few seconds longer. It won’t be enough. Not for the next year. But he tries.

“I’ll miss you,” Connor whispers.

“Miss you more,” he replies. “Call me when you land.”

Connor nods, standing up, taking slow steps backward, only letting go of Gavin’s hand when he has to. Gavin presses a kiss against his palm, waving goodbye to him reluctantly. Connor walks backward the entire way to the door, like he can’t stand taking his eyes off Gavin until he has to.

But when he’s gone, when the doors close, Gavin does cry. He can’t help it. It is not the goodbye he thought he would be forced to have at the beginning of the month and it’s a better goodbye he had than the night at Eddie’s, when he woke up and was told by some man in a suit that Connor would never see him again, but it still stings. It’s still a goodbye.

One year can’t pass fast enough.

  
  


**November 9th ** | 12:31 P.M.

He stays in the hospital far longer than he thinks he needed to be held there, but nearly everyone in the building was from the ICA. Monitoring, checking on him, making sure that he wasn’t going to spill their big secret to the public. He wouldn’t. Gavin doesn’t know how many times he needed to tell them that before they believed him. He wouldn’t risk Connor for anything, even if it was taking down the ICA. He doesn’t want to take down a company. He just wants to go home. He just wants to lay down in his own bed with real clothes and sleep for a little while.

Parts of the bones in his shoulder were fractured, though, from the bullet. He’s been released with paperwork on all the things to look out for, bottles of pills to help deal with the pain fight infections. It’s like before. Being kept for observation too long and released with such little life to go back to. People asking him questions, prying into his life about every little detail. The ICA wanted his side of the story, and he gave it in as vague detail as he could manage. They did set him up with a therapist, though. Gavin is grateful for that.

Connor did bring him a bag of his things, though. Everything that he accumulated in Connor’s apartment during the time he spent there, which wasn’t much. But Gavin notices when he looks through the bag that there are some of Connor’s hoodies inside, still smelling faintly of strawberry and linen, and he wears one of those when he heads home. He wishes he had more. Gavin is feeling selfish and stupid, but he wishes he had more of Connor to bring with him.

The taxi stops outside of the apartment building, Gavin passing money up to the driver as he leaves, a little wobbly, a little uncertain as he steps towards the building. There is all this—

This life ahead of him that he didn’t think about before.

He doesn’t know what to do with it.

He pushes the apartment door open, waits for the elevator, waits as it climbs upwards. When he steps off, he passes by the numbers on the doors as he searches for the one he’s tried to make sure he’s memorized correctly. Too often numbers in his head swap themselves around. 978 instead of 897 or 798. The numbers are all tied to Connor and Niles now.

And Seven, too. He wishes he could’ve met him. Maybe in some other life.

Gavin finally comes to a stop at the door, raising his hand up to knock on the door. Waiting for the answer. It takes longer than he expected. A second and then the sound of locks being undone, of the chains moving aside, of the door opening slowly.

“What the hell happened to you, Vinny?”

Everything. Everything that could ever happen.

“Hi, Eli,” he says quietly. “Can I stay with you for a little while?”

“Of course. Everything alright?”

He doesn’t know. 

He doesn’t know what he’ll tell Eli. He doesn’t know what explanation he will give him. If it will be the truth or part of the truth or a full lie laced with details he’ll never keep straight. But he knows he doesn’t have to tell Elijah yet. Instead, Elijah helps him to the guest room that he knows will become his room for a while longer than Eli probably would prefer.

Gavin doesn’t know if he’s alright, but he does know that he  _ will  _ be alright. He understands what North and Connor were telling me before. He  _ is  _ a survivor. He has survived more than he thought possible. He can survive this, too. He thinks he can do that now. Not just for Connor, and not for Eli, either. But for himself, too.

He’ll survive this. He’s not giving himself a choice anymore.

So he opens his laptop, he breathes in a breath, and he starts to type his response to all of Tina’s old emails. The truth and all its gory parts—

Maybe, though, redacting a few of the murders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have forgotten for the last 5 chapters to share my playlist for gavin's band so [here it is,](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/60wOY2xjpEchdV7DLXqP1r?si=kyMce79UTD2IOBM7iVv-nw) it has a variety of songs from when he was in high school/college versus songs he might've written during the events of this fic. it's just sort of my aesthetic/vibe i had going for him >.<
> 
> i also made up a playlist of [songs i wrote to](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3amVktBGh9VhIlqx6ouqpx?si=LKt_uVQVSP24df8M4ySBDA) while writing this, not all of them necessarily have lyrics that fit the fic but helped create the atmosphere for writing this.
> 
> thank you so much for reading! <3


End file.
